LONDON: Elon Musk’s muscle-bound style of management? Move to us! That’s the pitch being used by talent-starved technology firms trying to lure thousands of former Twitter employees to the social media giant under its new owner.
Twitter has fired top executives and implemented sweeping job cuts with little warning following Musk’s tumultuous takeover of the social media platform. About half of the workforce – about 3,700 employees – has been laid off.
Hundreds more have reportedly resigned as a result of his sweeping reforms. On Monday, the French operations chief was the latest senior manager to leave.
Opportunity for espionage, some companies are now trying to hire experienced engineering talent by appealing to disgust at the ways of the world’s richest man.
Katie Burke, the chief people officer of U.S. software company HubSpot, criticized Musk over reports that he fired a group of employees who criticized him on the company’s internal Slack channels. JEE News could not confirm these reports.
“As a leader, criticism is part of your job,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post. “Great leaders recognize debate and disagreement makes you better and is part of the process. If you want a place where you can disagree with people (in a kind, clear way), hire HubSpot.” are being done.”
As of late Monday, Burke’s post had received more than 35,000 positive reactions on Linkedin.
Twitter and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.
Other companies are taking a similar approach to HubSpot.
Amanda Richardson, CEO of recruitment software startup CoderPad, published an open letter to Twitter quitters.
Referring to Musk’s initial ban on remote working, Richardson described Musk’s takeover as a “s*** show” that was “horribly frustrating, depressing and demoralizing.”
“At CoderPad, we believe your skills say everything. Not where you sit. Not if you sleep on the job. Not working 18 hours a day, 7 days a week.”
Other major US tech firms, including Meta and Amazon, have also laid off thousands of workers in recent weeks due to the uncertain economic environment.
But Musk’s public criticism underscores the strong demand for highly skilled digital workers in some parts of the industry.
A recent report by market analysis firm Gartner found that high attrition rates and digitization efforts in business and government have created a “hypercompetitive” market for technical talent.
Massive job cuts and public resignations at Twitter have sparked concerns that the firm is shedding key staff and fears that the social media “Town Square” could face technical problems.
Michael Wenning, CEO of US cloud and software company Calix, called the recent events “disturbing” on Twitter, and promised that the new hires would enjoy a corporate culture that “feels familiar to our team members. Begins” in a similar Linkedin post.
“It’s a great opportunity from our perspective, because people who didn’t talk to us before are desperate and watching,” Wenning told JEE News. “People in a toxic culture say, ‘No more.'”
