A large group of technical people must maintain and enhance complex software. Just because it seems simple doesn’t mean it is. You could say the same thing about Facebook or Google, which have thousands of employees doing the same.
Yeah. My non-legal gut feeling is that this is an exempt vs. non-exempt issue:
I used to date a guy who worked for Apple. They offered basically none of the perks that the other big tech companies offered, other than a pretty nice cafeteria. “You get to work for Apple,” was supposed to be enough of a perk by itself. Occasionally, they’d rent out a theater for a big event movie right before it opened.
He really hated working there. But that was back in the Steve Jobs days, so maybe they’ve unbent a bit since then.
Those generally apply to “non-exempt” workers, you know, hourly peons.
I strongly suspect most, if not all, of the people Musk’s latest stupid directive is pointed at fall under “exempt”.
Yes, and let me be clear: I’m sure that there is plenty of work for the software engineers, sys admins, enterprise architects, product managers etc. Then there is all the other work around Twitter as a corporation, such as an (increasingly) busy PR department.
I was just saying that compared to other software companies of a comparable size, Twitter’s core product is pretty lightweight. So their focus should be on prototyping new ideas, which works best in a calm environment, not like there’s a gun to your head and you must be “hardcore”.
Note that Twitter itself was not the company’s original product, and came about after a day of brainstorming.
I don’t see any benefit here of cracking the whip.
This kind of hardcore, 70+ hours a week, “If you’re not willing to work on Saturday, don’t bother coming in on Sunday” thing used to be (and I presume still is) very common at startups. But they had a carrot to dangle in front of employees - lots stock options and the generally illusory goal that they’d make millions when the company went public in a year or two. I really have no idea what Twitter will use to incentivize their employees for this kind of death march, especially since it seems open ended.
The incentive is you get to keep your job.
He hired a PR firm to “monitor” Tesla employees’ social media for signs of unionizing. Stands to reason that he’d do the same for Twitter, if they’re not already.
It’s right in the article:
In the memo, Musk goes on to outline how Twitter will be “much more engineering-driven” and then gives staff an ultimatum. “If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below,” directing staff to what appears to be an online form. Musk said any employee who has not done so by 5 p.m. ET on Thursday will receive three months severance.
There are other software jobs out there, which don’t demand you work 70 hours a week. I’m guessing they could find one before the 3 months severance works out.
I’ve grown to the point where I truly and ardently detest that man. 
There is one potential legal issue and that’s the 3 months severance bit.
That is not sufficient in some states, so an employee who doesn’t comply with the pledge may need to be paid more in severance than that.
Maybe a nitpicky detail but most CEOs know better than firing off potentially actionable emails in the middle of the night without running them past Legal. I wouldn’t say our CEO is in the running for a Nobel prize but at least he knows enough not leave a paper trail on these sorts of unofficial policies.
Severance is typically based on years of service, but I’m not sure it has to be. I think it could be a flat amount as long as everyone gets the same. IANALaborL. It depends on what the law is in California.
There is no legal requirement under California law that employers provide severance pay to an employee upon termination of employment.
If it’s one at-will employee, no problem. But for a mass layoff, it can run afoul of the WARN act, and several states have their own WARN acts with different terms. Or from any employee agreements the company has in those states.
If this decision affects enough employees to trip any of that, he may be on the hook for more than 90 days for those employees.
Note there are current cases from the earlier mass Twitter layoff and from Tesla because of this - Musk didn’t do the proper legal due diligence on handling the layoffs.
Basically, the State (the generic ‘state’) has an interest in making sure there isn’t a sudden surge of unemployed people without giving anybody any warning.
Again, a major reason why a company’s Legal/Compliance team should vet communications from the CEO.
Mr. Musk and I have very different definitions of ‘Hardcore’.
Yeah. I probably got out over my skis. I’m perusing this now:
Twitter sells advertising. That takes people. One of Musk’s moves was to fire the execs who had good relationships with the big ad firms that placed ads on Twitter. That’s not going to help the companies who have paused advertising to start again. You can’t run Twitter on Tesla ads.
An article mentioned that no one renewed vital third party software the platform needs. That takes people also. If you fire everyone who knows what it needs to maintain the infrastructure, your infrastructure is going to crash eventually.
One of the problems the advertisers have is that they don’t want their ads posted near racist or fascist tweets. Getting rid of them takes people. Besides Musk signalling that lies are now okay to post, no moderators mean these things slip through. More reason for the advertisers to stay away.
The blue check subscription fiasco is in no doubt partially due to not having enough people to implement and test a major change.
Now, working long hours is nothing new. 25 years ago when I worked at Intel they started dinners for our project, mostly to show the competing project we were serious also. Not mandatory, but they took names, and the one person who left at a reasonable time due to being in a carpool got a bad rating against the wishes of his direct boss. Not much got done 6 - 9 pm, but we looked busy.
This isn’t illegal, but it’s stupid, since these people will be “paid” in promised options - while Musk is saying Twitter might go bankrupt. They are going to wind up with the good people leaving and those who feel they can’t get a good job elsewhere staying. I’ve seen it happen.
BTW, Musk just fired employees who said negative things about him on Twitter. Great way of building morale.
I don’t know if it applies to severance, but for unemployment, if the boss drastically changes your job or hours and you quit, that can be considered a constructive dismissal, and it counts as being fired for unemployment purposes.
Sorry, quoted wrong and manually fixed
My (probably wrong) understanding of exempt employees is that they perform duties and if it takes them 8 hours or 80 hours per week it doesn’t matter. Yes some exempt employees like a fast-food manager may have hours on-site as part of their duties but that once you start putting “You must work 40 hours per week.” that does not tie in with their actual job duties there is a danger they might be considered non-exempt. Am I completely off on that?
The FLSA lays it out depending on if the employee is an executive, a teacher, a professional, etc so it would generally depend, but in this case, these sorts of professional employees (ones who’s jobs are primarily intellectual in nature and require advanced knowledge or skills) and pass the minimum pay requirements are exempt.
At the federal level, expecting 80 hours of work a week from that doesn’t change the exemption. But some states may have additional requirements or limitations.