Twitter to recruit as employees exit over ‘high intensity’ workload demand
Twitter is reportedly looking to recruit roles in engineering and sales after shedding two-thirds of its workforce in recent weeks.
Sources attending a meeting with new owner Elon Musk told The Verge employees are being encouraged to refer friends to join the company, with those able to write software of “the highest priority”. As reported by The Verge last week, Twitter recruiters have been approaching engineers and asking them to join ‘Twitter 2.0 – an Elon company.’The news of a potential recruitment drive comes as estimates suggest the Twitter workforce has shrunk from around 7,500 employees to just 2,700 since Musk’s takeover, including the departure of senior hires such as head of ad sales Robin Wheeler and chief customer officer Sarah Personette. It is understood current vice-president of EMEA Chris Riedy will take over Twitter’s ad team and partnerships, after more than a decade at the company.
Despite the intention to recruit, the business is reported to have sacked sales employees yesterday who had signed up to Musk’s ‘Twitter 2.0’ vision. Outlined last week, the new CEO gave staff a deadline to commit to work “long hours at high intensity”, warning they should be prepared for the company to be “extremely hardcore”. It is estimated 1,000 people resigned last week as a result.
Musk confirmed in the meeting there are “no plans” to move Twitter’s headquarters from San Francisco to Texas as he did with Tesla, The Verge reports. He said such a decision could be construed as a “right-wing takeover of Twitter”, when his ownership represents a “moderate-wing takeover”. Musk did, however, suggest the business could be “dual-headquartered” in California and Texas.
The new Twitter CEO is also said to have suggested setting up decentralised engineering teams in Japan, India, Indonesia and Brazil, while singling out Japan as a key market for the social media platform.
“It may seem as though Twitter is US-centric, but if anything it’s Japan-centric,” Musk reportedly said. “There are roughly the same number of daily active users in Japan as there are in the US, despite the fact that Japan has one third of the population of the US.”
From a product perspective, the Twitter boss told staff in the meeting he intends to encrypt direct messages and look to add encrypted video and voice calling between accounts. The social media company has not responded to reports emerging from the staff meeting as it no longer has a communications department.
