Twitter owner Eon Musk has said that after firing almost two-thirds of Twiter’s 7,500-person workforce over the past three weeks and decimating the company’s contract workforce, the company is now hiring again with an emphasis on coders. Musk didn’t comment on if he would rehire any workers impacted by layoffs if they learned to code.
The Verge reports that Elon Musk said in an all-hands meeting with Twitter employees this week that layoffs have been completed and that engineering and sales positions are currently open. These comments were made the same day that Twitter’s sales department was hit by an unexpected round of layoffs. Since Musk’s takeover, the company’s sales department has lost almost all of its senior leadership.
Musk didn’t disclose the kinds of engineering or sales roles Twitter was offering, and the firm doesn’t currently have any open positions listed on its website. During the meeting, Musk stated: “In terms of critical hires, I would say that individuals who are terrific at writing code are the highest priority.” According to the Verge, recruiters were already contacting engineers last week and asking them to join “Twitter 2.0—an Elon company.”
Musk addressed Twitter employees for the first time since his “extremely hardcore” cultural reset, which led to over 1,000 resignations last week. Musk, who fielded employee questions for about half an hour in Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, said that there are “no plans” to move Twitter’s headquarters to Texas as he did with Tesla, but that it could make sense in the future to be “dual-headquartered” in California and Texas.
Musk told employees: “If we want to move the headquarters to Texas I think it would play into the idea that Twitter has gone from being left-wing to right-wing, which is not the case. This is not a right-wing takeover of Twitter. It is a moderate-wing takeover of Twitter.”
Musk added that “to be the digital town square, we must represent people with a wide array of views even if we disagree with those views.” Musk did not discuss the firing of employees that criticized or questioned him both publicly on Twitter and privately in the company’s Slack channels.
Musk said that employees are to be given stock options in Twitter and be able to cash them out regularly, similar to the compensation setup that employees at SpaceX have. “The way things work at SpaceX to get liquidity is that every six months there’s a liquidity event where the company buys back shares and we also invite new investors to buy shares,” he said. “And we’ll be able to operate Twitter in the same way.”
Breitbart News recently reported that in a tweet, Elon Musk stated once again that InfoWars host Alex Jones will never be allowed to return to Twitter, saying that as a parent who himself lost an infant, he has “no mercy” for “anyone who would use the deaths of children for gain.”
Musk recently announced the return of a number of permanently suspended Twitter accounts to the platform, including author Jordan Peterson, left-wing comedian Kathy Griffin and former President Donald Trump. As Breitbart News previously reported, at the same time Musk restored several prominent banned accounts including the Babylon Bee, he also promised to shadowban wrongthink.
Read more at the Verge here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan