Posts Tagged: mass

Twitter hit with mass resignations after Elon Musk’s ‘hardcore’ ultimatum

Elon Musk is now facing a new crisis at Twitter as a wave of employees seemed to reject his ultimatum of an “extremely hardcore” Twitter 2.0 or leave the company. Hours after a deadline for workers to check “yes” on a Google form accepting “long hours at high intensity, it seems a large number of employees have rejected Musk’s vision.

Exactly how many employees opted for severance over remaining at Twitter isn’t yet clear. The New York Timesreported the number was in the “hundreds,” while other early reports suggest the number could be much higher. The departures come after Musk already cut 50 percent of Twitter’s jobs in mass layoffs.

On Twitter, dozens of Twitter employees who had survived the initial round of layoffs tweeted farewell messages. One employee tweeted a video of a group of workers inside Twitter’s office counting down to the 5pm ET deadline on Musk’s ultimatum. “We’re all about to get fired,” he said.

Others tweeted messages alluding to Musk’s policies. In his Wednesday morning message, Musk had said that “only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”

As the deadline approached, Musk reportedly grew concerned about how many remaining employees could leave the company. In a new memo, he appeared to walk back some of his earlier comments banning all remote work, though he still said he would fire managers if remote workers on their teams weren’t performing.

But it seems the concession wasn’t enough for many at Twitter Platformer’s Zoe Schiffer reported Thursday that Musk and his lieutenants were struggling to figure out just how many employees had declined to check the “yes” box on his Google form, and that Twitter would be closing down access to its offices for a few days as an extra precaution.

The departures raise new questions about whether the remaining Twitter engineers will be able to reliably keep the service up and running. Current and former employees are already speculating that the latest exodus could further put Twitter’s ability to function at risk, especially with the start of the World Cup a few days away.

Twitter no longer has communications staff, but Musk so far hasn’t publicly commented on the resignations.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Twitter sued by employees amid mass layoffs

Twitter is facing a class action lawsuit over its ongoing mass layoffs today, which could likely cut its workforce in half. According to Bloomberg, employees filed a class action lawsuit against the company in San Francisco federal court, arguing that Twitter’s actions run afoul of the US Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act. Under the labor law, companies with 100 or more employees are required to notify them of mass layoffs 60 days in advance.

The New York Times reported earlier that Twitter will begin layoffs on Friday and that around half of the company’s staff members will lose their jobs. In an email seen by The Washington Post, Twitter said that the layoffs are “unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.” The company also told employees to stay at home today and to wait for an email. If they get one in their Twitter account, their job is safe. But if they receive the email in their personal account, that means they’re being let go. Some people are reporting on the social network that they already got locked out of their work emails and had been removed from company Slack. 

The plaintiffs are asking the court to issue an order forcing Twitter to obey the WARN Act. They also want the court to prohibit the company from soliciting employees to sign away their right to litigate. Shannon Liss-Riordan, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs, said they filed the complaint “in an attempt to make sure that employees are aware that they should not sign away their rights and that they have an avenue for pursuing their rights.”

Liss-Riordan was also the lawyer who handled the lawsuit against Tesla in June over layoffs that cut 10 percent of the automaker’s workforce. Similar to this complaint, the plaintiffs back then argued that Tesla violated the WARN Act. Company chief Elon Musk, who took over Twitter a week ago, called the lawsuit “trivial” in a talk with Bloomberg Editor-In-Chief John Micklethwait. The court had also sided with the company and ruled that employees should negotiate with Tesla in a closed-door arbitration instead.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

US could soon end mass phone surveillance program exposed by Snowden

The US government might put an end to the controversial NSA phone surveillance program Edward Snowden exposed by the end of 2019. Republican congressional national security adviser Luke Murry revealed during a Lawfare podcast that Congress might not…
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What EA learned from ‘Mass Effect’ will shape its future

When I spoke to Electronic Arts' executive vice president Patrick Soderlund last week, Kotaku's report about why Mass Effect: Andromeda turned out so poorly hadn't been published yet. Nonetheless, when I asked him about the flawed game's development…
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New production method may accelerate mass production of graphene

Conventional graphene production methods include a number of steps, such as growth, transfer, patterning, and deposition. Researchers in the United Kingdom have managed to consolidate a number of these steps.

The post New production method may accelerate mass production of graphene appeared first on Digital Trends.

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There’s a new boss in charge of ‘Mass Effect’ and ‘Dragon Age’

Electronic Arts is changing. Many of the massive publisher-developer's myriad studios will now be assembled under one figurative roof at EA Worldwide Studios. Describing the change, EA CEO and part-time Mirror's Edge villain Andrew Wilson says it "wi…
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Apple will shut down HopStop’s mass transit services in October

Apple kept HopStop's mass transit directions and guides running (with notable exceptions) long after it bought the company back in 2013, but you won't get to rely on them for much longer: Cupertino has revealed that it's shutting down HopStop come…
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