"Some people may quit on principle because they don't want to work for Musk." Current and former Twitter employees — on the sale of the company

One of the most high-profile news this spring in the tech market was the purchase of Twitter by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk for Twitter 44 billion. Subsequently, it was reported that the social network may soon become paid for users of the corporate segment and government agencies. Later, Musk allegedly suspended the deal while waiting for a report on the number of bots on the network.

In the meantime, the owner of Tesla and SpaceX is looking for the most profitable options for acquiring a new company for himself, we decided to find out the opinions of current and former Twitter employees regarding this deal. They asked them how the new owner can affect the development of the company, its work processes and structure, whether employees themselves expect possible cuts, as well as changes in working conditions and compensation amounts.

Vitaly Bondarenko, Staff Software Engineer on Twitter

"The company's structure will change fundamentally"

Regular Twitter employees only have information available to the general public. From these limited comments from Musk, it follows that his plans are very ambitious, and to implement them, the entrepreneur needs to make the company private in order to be less dependent on the short-term share price.

The future impact on employees is unclear. There may be layoffs, someone will leave on their own. However, it is worth noting that the company is not a brand or hardware. The company's value is created by employees, so I look forward to the future with optimism.

About changes in the structure. The company's structure will change fundamentally-for example, there will be no board of directors. It is very likely that senior management will change. New management may decide to make changes to workflows. But this will finally be clear after the arrival of the new management and their assessment of the internal situation.

So far, there has been no change of ownership, so there could not be any cuts either. Buying a company of this scale is a long process, and it has yet to be approved by regulators. A minority shareholder recently filed a lawsuit. According to preliminary estimates, Musk can actually become the owner of the company in 3-6 months. So, so far, nothing has changed, even in the hiring processes.

About salaries. Everyone is interested in the issue of revising compensation, but there is a clause in the contract for the purchase of Twitter that benefits and compensation cannot change for the worse during the year.

We had an internal speech from management, where it described the company's purchase processes, the impact of this on employees (currently not available), and what might happen in the future. It meant that the management was not aware of what the new owner would do.

About the possible outflow of personnel. My colleagues are very different, and they, accordingly, have different opinions about buying a company. I believe that some people may leave on principle, because they do not want to work for Musk.

The other part is optimistic about this deal. Of course, this is a big change and many people are worried about their stability. However, there are many job search positions in the US programmer market, and this gradually reduces nervousness.

Arsen Kostenko, Senior Software Engineer at Netflix, former software Engineer at Twitter

"Now there will be less attention to audiovisual formats and more attention to text, user interaction and the company"

This agreement is an unexpected and rather resonant step in the media. Twitter is known as a media favorite, although up to this point it has not significantly affected the increase in the number of users or the improvement of their experience. Let's hope it's different this time.

One can only guess exactly how this deal will affect the company. I suspect that there will be another round of reorganization, as the vision of Twitter's development changes. The structure of the company should also change, according to Conway's law, because virtually every organization reproduces its own internal structure in the product. Part of Musk's vision can be heard in his TED 2022 speech.

I assume that there will be less attention to audiovisual formats and more attention to text, user interaction and the company. There should also be less attention to bots and more emphasis on the "sincerity of human dialogue."

About changes in workflows. For some reason, the first changes were proactive: top managers Cavon Bakepur and Bruce Falk were fired. Both were known as brave pioneers and visionaries within the company. As for Cavon's role, it can be added that a big bet was made on him when Twitter wanted to switch from "live conversation" to "live video" in 2015. So now we can talk about reducing the role of video format on the platform.

Cuts are now being talked about everywhere in Silicon Valley, so these processes can occur regardless of Musk's acquisition of the company.

About compensation. The amount of compensation is more affected by the competitive environment. I doubt there will be any significant changes here if the office stays in San Francisco. However, Musk also mentioned the significant impact of the" liberal agenda " due to the location of the office in this city. This can be interpreted as a hint of a move.

In general, there has been talk of turning Twitter into a "public service" like Wikipedia since 2015-2016, when the company's shares sank significantly. Perhaps in a format where ad revenue doesn't determine the company's actions, we'll all get more benefits. However, recent news suggests that Musk may change his mind about buying Twitter.

Kirill Fedyai, User Acquisition manager at VistaCreate (has long experience working with Twitter)

"No one spends 4 44 billion without expecting to recapture the investment later; there may be a development of the so-called Crypto Twitter"

As a User Acquisition Specialist, I have worked with Twitter Ads for a long time. I have experience working with various goals of advertising campaigns, advertising formats, and so on.

I think that the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk will be a generally positive change for the company and its shareholders. Any social network is monetized mainly through advertising-this can be seen in financial reports, press releases, and so on. Therefore, I believe that Elon will try to increase advertising revenue, as well as develop current and develop new monetization formats that are independent of advertising.

About Musk's interest in profit. I don't really believe his statements about disinterest in the economic side of the issue. No one spends 4 44 billion without expecting to recapture the investment later. This will either strengthen the advertising side of the business, or invent a new monetization model in the context of social networks. In 2021, Twitter showed record growth thanks to advertising. Therefore, I think that Elon will pay attention to this and still develop the advertising direction along with the social one.

Twitter has a unique audience, which can be very valuable for some categories of advertisers. The first thing that comes to mind is cryptocurrency. Everyone knows about the so — called Crypto Twitter-This is a fairly large community, but now no one can directly advertise crypto projects without special approval from the social network itself. Since Musk is a fan of cryptocurrencies and freedom of speech, it is possible that he will change this policy and we will see the growth of this particular sector of advertising on Twitter.

I do not know if Musk will reduce the number of people in the company. I think that no one can give an exact answer to this question. However, we can recall that Elon has already reduced people in Tesla.