If Friday brought massive layoffs to Twitter, Monday brought fresh evidence that the company will never be the same. Musk has discussed putting the entire site behind a paywall, Platformers has learned. Meanwhile, the company is scrambling to lure back employees who it laid off mere hours ago, and some workers say the economics behind its soon-to-relaunch Twitter Blue subscription could actually lose the company money.
Elon Musk has discussed putting all of Twitter behind a paywall
All of this took place against the backdrop of a company that still has yet to hear anything official from Musk, via email or a companywide meeting. As Monday began, after losing thousands of their colleagues days earlier, many employees didn’t know who their managers are.
Meanwhile, Musk’s increasing erratic leadership, coupled with his habit of tweeting in eye-watering bad tastegave many current and former employees I spoke with a sinking feeling about the future of their company.
Today let’s talk a bit more about how the company botched its layoff process, what happened inside Twitter on Monday, and what that paywall might look like.
I. The botch
Friday’s layoffs had been brutal for all involved, including those involved in planning them — many of whom themselves lost their jobs. While the process varied by team, some managers were asked to submit to Musk’s team two sentences about all of their direct reports: one sentence explaining what the employee did, and one sentence justifying their continued employment at Twitter.
“You were like, this better be a fucking good sentence,” one person asked