What Twitter employees are saying about Elon Musk

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

The company's channels were lit up with nervous anticipation in the moments before Musk bought it. After a weekend of reports that a sale was imminent, employees were looking for answers.

None came for the first few hours. Employees told me that work was almost done. One said that like a classroom where the teacher is late, students are trying to self-govern. Ahellhole, said another. A thread in which an employee asked if anyone was excited about working for Musk drew a lot of ugly responses.

The board accepted Musk's offer to take the company private for $54.20 a share, just before the markets closed. Three weeks ago, what began as a passive investment ended with Musk in charge.

Employees told me that sentiment in the public channels remained negative after the announcement.

Responses were more cautious in one-on-one discussions. Some employees are open to the idea that a private company run by Musk would be better for the service than a public company. They like the fact that he wants to bring more clarity to how recommendation algorithms work.

Half or more of the compensation of many employees is in stock. Employees were told at an all-hands meeting that they won't get equity when the company goes private. One person told me that group chats are trying to figure out if working at Twitter makes economic sense.

Can someone just tell me if I’m rich or fired please

— Ned Miles (@nedmiles) April 25, 2022

The deal is expected to close in six months. At that time, it seems likely that CEO Parag Agrawal will leave the company. There would be no layoffs in the near term, though he wouldn't say if there would be a hiring freeze. There is a partial freeze on new features, although I'm told that it's standard during times when there is a lot of attention on social media.

In the meantime, hiring will be harder. There is a chance that the company will see significant attrition, particularly in the leadership ranks, and on the teams that work to fight harassment and abuse. The company's earnings report Thursday doesn't have the potential to further tank its stock.

It's difficult to predict beyond that, as with everything related to the Musk story over the past month.

How did we get here?

Musk's acquisition is an extraordinary story. Acquiring 9 percent of the company as a passive investor, failing to report it on time, getting invited to join the board, and then offering to buy the company.

On the other hand, as Matt Levine noted today, once Musk made his offer, the whole thing proceeded normally. The board put a poison pill in place to prevent Musk from acquiring more of the company. Musk had to prove that he had the funds to complete the deal. The board considered its options after he did so. The 38 percent premium that Musk offered over its current stock price struck members as the best deal they could get.

It was just business.

The former executives I spoke with were relieved that the company now has a chance to make a difference. While it had to report quarterly earnings, a private company beholden to the interests of one man may be able to transform itself in ways that it never could.

Is the $44 billion question transformed into what?

What is the purpose of the social networking site? One former executive told me that everyone who has been in control of the company has had a different answer to the question.

There was an era after Jack Dorsey came back as CEO and tried to focus on what was happening. The company was made a platform for healthy conversation and turned into a protocol.

What does Musk think is the purpose of the social network? All we have to do is follow a series of short statements that allow for interpretation. He is a blank canvas in this moment where people can project their hopes and fears, like the Republican members of Congress, free speech is making a comeback, and their fears.

He said on stage at TED that he didn't care about economics at all. Here are Anirban Sen and Krystal Hu.

More than two-thirds of the $46.5 billion financing package that Musk unveiled on Thursday in support of his bid for Twitter would come from his assets, with the remainder coming from bank loans secured against the social media platform’s assets.

That is the reverse of how most investors structure buyouts, with debt secured against the assets of the target company typically comprising the majority of the financing. […]

What is more, Musk has agreed to take out a risky $12.5 billion margin loan, secured against his stock of Tesla Inc, the electric-car maker that he leads, to pay for some of the $33.5 billion equity check. Were Tesla’s stock to drop by 40%, he would have to repay that loan, a regulatory filing shows.

To avoid having to sell a bunch of hisTesla stock and pay off his loan, maybe Musk has to care about the economics of the social network.

What does he do?

It is fashionable to suggest that Musk should get rid of the ads business. Advertising is out of fashion. According to former employees, ads still make sense for a feed-based social network. It was the best way to make the most money when Dick Costolo was the CEO, one person said.

One idea that keeps coming is to make power users pay for access to their large audiences.

It's possible that the company could lean harder into becoming a decentralized protocol, selling access to the platform to enable developers to build a variety of different front-end experiences. The core service could be turned into an enterprise software product by allowing different users to choose different styles of moderation.

I think they are plausible. Musk isn't tipping it if he has a hand. His official statement today doesn't show much about what he will do with the company beyond the close of the deal.

“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” said Mr. Musk. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”

He might develop a stronger point of view in the coming months.

The other big question is who will be in charge of day to day running of the social media site. Presumably Musk won't be spending eight hours a day on social media. If and when Musk takes over, he would seem to be in line for a $39 millionPayout if he stays with the company through the close of the deal. Who will trust Musk's vision for the company? It is one of the most interesting tech stories of the year.

Will Musk allow Donald Trump to return to the platform? Even if he was invited, Trump will not return to the social network. The former president said he will use his own platform, Truth Social, which he has completely ignored after posting there once. Some people pointed out that Trump has lied in the past, and might be lying about it. Time will tell!

The most definitive, histrionic takes on what Musk's acquisition will mean for the user experience were posted on my timeline today. It's about to be overtaken by troll and harassers, and it's about to see an employee exodus like never before. And so on.

Maybe all of that is true or not. Some of the worries would seem to be justified, based on Musk's past statements. Predicting Musk's behavior is a mug's game, and the cart feels way ahead of the horse. The life of a public company is not always distinguished. It is up to Musk to see if it can fare better as a private entity.