제 17 호 Battle Against Musk Between Employees in Twitter
Highly Coveted Tech Company Going on a Diet Brought Trouble
Kicker : OPINION
Battle Against Musk Between Employees in Twitter
Highly Coveted Tech Company Going on a Diet Brought Trouble
Do-Hyuk Kim, Reporter
Twitter's Layoff Under Musk's Ownership is a Hot Potato
Elon Musk, a man widely known for founding electric vehicle manufacturing company ‘Tesla’ and playing a key role in rectifying mistakes that Tesla made in its early years to grow up as one of world’s best tech companies, recently bought ‘Twitter.’ Twitter is a familiar Social Networking Service provider to all of us, and the owner of the company recently changed to a man whose activities always spell trouble and revive certain issues to be widely perceived. Just after Musk took over the throne of this company, large numbers of Twitter’s employees faced critical act that threatened their daily lives. What is going on in this immensely popular company and why did Musk deploy such a tactic that killed off a big number of people to become unemployed? Here are details about the progress and reason that Musk’s ownership of Twitter is heading in such a way.
Musk is not a newcomer in terms of partial ownership of Twitter. Musk announced to purchase stock of Twitter since January 2022, then became the largest shareholder in April. Musk confirmed to take over Twitter at a remarkably expensive forty-three billion dollars, telling people that he is believing Twitter’s possibility to grow up as a worldwide channel to defend freedom of speech. He additionally said “freedom of speech being guaranteed is crucial for democracy to work properly in countries.” But then, Musk changed his mind not to take over Twitter, and then flipped his announcement again to undergo the takeover at the price he previously declared. After this long and stressful process, Elon Musk became the owner of Twitter, Inc. It took half a year for him to finally become the owner of this big tech company.
Almost right after Musk took over Twitter, he announced that “Twitter is going to lay off a large number of current employees and is about to make a major shift into a new platform of providing an agora where everyone can express their thoughts freely, which include political issues.” After just about three days passed, Elon Musk announced that nearly a quarter of Twitter’s workforce had to go back to their homes, which marked the first phase of Musk’s harsh wind blowing on Twitter. Then a big list of members that are going to be laid off turned up, which belonged to half of employees that worked for Twitter previously. Musk’s rush on laying off employees was widely criticized, but Musk persisted in making Twitter employees redundant.
Before going any further, it should be pointed out that being ‘fired’ and being ‘laid off’ deliver different meaning to Americans. Unlike South Korea where there is no classification on the fundamental reason of losing a job and simply call it as ‘being fired’, the United States has two different words for expressing that. Someone being fired means that the exact person is the trigger for this action. In other words, you are the main reason why you are going back to home. However, when you are laid off, you lost your job because of certain problems related to the company itself. In the case of Elon Musk ruling the company, most of the press are calling this major slaughter as being laid off from Twitter. Musk is arguing that people being fired marked undermining outcomes, and they deserve this measure, but most people are on the opposing side from Musk.
This action immediately became a controversy between the public and Musk. Twitter’s previous employees complained about Musk’s act referring to him as ‘acting like a child’, but the newly appointed CEO never stopped or hesitated. Most people blamed Musk for inciting an economic downturn, making a large number of people lose their job and starve for their daily lives in the middle of a recession. Passing through the COVID-19 era which high liquidity sustained everyone’s consumer sentiment and economy, people were all happy with their asset’s value skyrocketing and the value of money being undermined – which makes citizens spend money. But it is now time to face the high interest rate designated by the Fed, and tech giants, just like Twitter, are struggling to maintain the growth rate they had previously recorded. They reduced their recruitment and now they are barely hiring, and it looks like Musk sent a big bomb to the job market.
Sadly, no one could stop Musk from storming to the target that he suggested himself. The first major lay off begun in November and Musk partially admitted his mistake at the end of the same month for rushing and blowing away crucial workforce belonged to Twitter, asking some people he laid off to come back to Twitter. After cutting off half of the previous workforce, Musk resumed to lay off another large number of employees that have survived from November’s massacre, and he kept on his temper. Musk finally announced that laying off workers who contributed to Twitter in January 2023, and only one-fifth of employees survived at last. Seven and a half thousand workers are almost gone, the number dropped significantly to thirteen hundred. To deal with empty workforce, Musk decided to send some experts from his other companies that he owns. It is only 130 people, where the number of workforces he laid off is over six thousand. Because of this, Musk’s type of Twitter that has gone through a diet is now on a test platform. Is Musk’s first claim of ‘Twitter being the center of democracy and free expression’ going to be achieved successfully? Only time will tell, but the dramatic drop in number of the workforce implies that it would be not so easy.
Musk’s slaughter became so popular and so red hot, that laying off employees became a trend in this tech industry. Amazon announced that they would also lay off eighteen thousand workers. Musk’s sudden decision impacted so many people and lose their impetus to sustain their daily lives. I think the stakes were too big to go through such a challenge of making a tech giant compact and compressed, and Musk refused to stop. Laying off such a large number of people should be always done conservatively.
Since Twitter is not a charity organization, nothing is more important than the survival and maintaining cashflow to a company. Making Twitter viable again and escape from loss that Twitter was previously facing led to radical tactics. But there is a social rule that everyone admittedly agreed, which Musk managed to ignore and pushed through whatever he wanted. This sudden and extremely massive layoff should not be an example of a company sending their employees back to their homes. Twitter’s future revival might be successful, but I think it should not deserve such congratulations, because a huge number of people got an impact on their living.
Sources:
https://www.sedaily.com/NewsView/26DIC2U3TG
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/22/tech/twitter-layoffs-continue/index.html
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/04/twitter-layoffs-elon-musk-revenue-drop
https://www.theverge.com/23551060/elon-musk-twitter-takeover-layoffs-workplace-salute-emoji
https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/elon-musk-says-expects-new-twitter-ceo-toward-end-year (Image)
