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Elon Musk: Click "YES" or you're FIRED · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:00
  Early, Wednesday morning of this week.
• 0:02
  Billionaire, Elon Musk gave the remaining employees of Twitter
• 0:06
  in ultimatum. He said they can stay on inside,
• 0:10
  on to a new hardcore culture of long hours at high intensity, or
• 0:16
  they can just leave the company and employees have until 5
• 0:20
  o'clock Thursday to fill out a form with their decision.
• 0:24
  Should they stay? Should they go?
• 0:26
  What's the livelihood going to look like, what's the work-life
• 0:29
  balance? To look like all these things
• 0:31
  are kind of up in the air at this point, just a few hours
• 0:34
  before the deadline. Now there's questions about the
• 0:37
  terms of agreement and there's employee livelihoods.
• 0:40
  There's people that came into work with work visas from out of
• 0:43
  the country and these careers that were talking about some of
• 0:47
  these people. They've been there for decades,
• 0:49
  they've been with the company or with the founders for a long
• 0:51
  time and they really want to stay because they do see a
• 0:58
  future with Twitter and See a future with the technology and
• 1:02
  the ideas that Elon is bringing to the table that maybe The Pest
• 1:06
  Management didn't hear them out on.
• 1:08
  So on Wednesday, there was confusion employee saw answers
• 1:12
  of how their employment might be affected.
• 1:14
  Will they be working startup type hours where they get to
• 1:18
  work at 8:30 a.m. go home at 8:30 p.m. take the Trek all the
• 1:25
  way back there to their homes. Fall asleep and then wake up and
• 1:28
  do it over again. Then in the morning and not have
• 1:31
  any time for themselves at startup culture for you it
• 1:34
  there's people that have been in this country working for Twitter
• 1:38
  on work visas, what's going to be happening to them?
• 1:40
  They say no. They may have to find a new
• 1:43
  employer really quickly or they may have to go back because
• 1:46
  they're not working at this point in the United States.
• 1:49
  They do have some leeway there. They did have some time.
• 1:52
  But what would happen to employees that are there that
• 1:55
  are on vacation? The never got the email
• 1:57
  sometimes people are on vacation they shut off.
• 2:00
  All devices and they're not able to answer anything.
• 2:03
  And I know a few people like that.
• 2:04
  So, maybe they just didn't get the email.
• 2:06
  They can't fill out this form. They can't hit yes or no.
• 2:10
  So when they come back from work, are they going to have
• 2:12
  jobs? And if they don't have jobs,
• 2:15
  what's the severance for them? You know, those are all
• 2:17
  questions that have been in the, in the mindset of people that
• 2:21
  are working with and people that are in the company of Twitter at
• 2:26
  this point, you know, they have questions for Eli.
• 2:29
  On. And there's lots of them out
• 2:32
  there. I mean, we have questions
• 2:33
  ourselves and I'm sure you do too about what the future of
• 2:37
  Twitter's going to be like. And also what sort of new
• 2:40
  software Elon is going to implement in order to make
• 2:44
  Twitter a better product for everybody, but also how was his
• 2:49
  company going to be different than the Twitter?
• 2:51
  That's there, right now. So, right now, Twitter employees
• 2:55
  have great benefits, they have a great work-life balance as far
• 2:59
  as Companies, go, there are very solid company.
• 3:03
  They've been around for a long time.
• 3:05
  They have a lot of money, they can continue paying their
• 3:08
  people. It's so shake up, you know, like
• 3:11
  this big corporations that come in and they buy up smaller
• 3:14
  companies and they fire half the people that's kind of what
• 3:17
  happened here at Twitter and people get walked out the door,
• 3:21
  you know, with security. They just they show them the
• 3:24
  door and they say okay well you can't work here anymore.
• 3:26
  You're done. You get an email and all your
• 3:28
  system shutdown. You Log into systems that you're
• 3:31
  normally logged into when you wake up in the morning you know
• 3:35
  with your cup of coffee your house and usually check
• 3:37
  inventory with your email or other messaging apps and you're
• 3:41
  just locked out and what happens.
• 3:43
  So this at least this gives people the opportunity to leave
• 3:48
  on their own accord. So if you say yes, I'm willing
• 3:51
  to go 150% for Twitter and for your vision of the future, then
• 3:56
  you're in. But if you say no, can you Move
• 4:00
  on from this to something else. There is going to be a
• 4:04
  compensation for people that leave people that stick around.
• 4:08
  Of course, will be compensated fairly but there's going to be
• 4:11
  enough Severance for the people that do click know that they're,
• 4:16
  you know, the resigning basically employees could leave
• 4:19
  and they could go to another company right away.
• 4:22
  To the Twitter Exodus is happening, my friends and most
• 4:26
  people in the US who don't click.
• 4:28
  Yes, will receive. Two minutes, two months on
• 4:31
  payroll with benefits. So, you have two months worth of
• 4:35
  money to live on, if you don't have any money in the bank, and
• 4:38
  hopefully, if you're working at Twitter, you can save a little
• 4:40
  bit of money if you're, if you're good with your money.
• 4:43
  If two months of severance with benefits, plus plus 1, month of
• 4:47
  severance pay, if they sign a forthcoming separation
• 4:51
  agreement, the terms of slightly different for New York city
• 4:54
  employees, in an order to receive the additional month of
• 4:57
  severance pay employees. Must agree in sinus.
• 4:59
  Operation agreement, but the terms of that agreement have not
• 5:03
  been shared with the employees yet.
• 5:05
  So you're in this position, you have to make this decision but
• 5:08
  you don't have all of the data in order to make that decision
• 5:12
  that seems kind of Reckless is kind of haphazard, and the
• 5:15
  document says that the agreement will be circulated in the coming
• 5:19
  weeks. So if you click no, you don't
• 5:22
  really know what's gonna happen. You don't know what this
• 5:24
  separation agreement is. And maybe you're counting on
• 5:27
  this money because you really don't know what the job market
• 5:29
  is going to be. Be right now, the market is kind
• 5:31
  of up in the air for tech companies.
• 5:33
  A lot of companies are laying people off.
• 5:36
  Let's just put it how it is, they're not laying people off
• 5:39
  their straight up. Firing people, they don't care
• 5:43
  about the money that these people will be losing because
• 5:47
  the company continues on The Show, Must Go On, they say, but
• 5:51
  these people's lives are affected by it.
• 5:53
  So basically these people get a chance to say I don't want I
• 5:57
  don't really want to work here anymore.
• 5:59
  It was cool. Run man, but let's keep moving
• 6:02
  on. I'm just gonna move on from this
• 6:03
  place they're people that are diehards.
• 6:06
  People that are diehards that are like I'm going to work at
• 6:08
  Twitter. I know let's companies going to
• 6:10
  be successful and we can do what we want to do.
• 6:14
  And there's there's a vision in place for sort of like a wee
• 6:17
  chat for the US and surrounding countries.
• 6:20
  So like the the vision that Ilana said about x.com where
• 6:24
  there's going to be banking, there's going to be chat,
• 6:27
  there's going to be basically, you can Do everything with
• 6:31
  WeChat. So it basically takes over what
• 6:34
  you can do with your phone's operating system, but with one
• 6:37
  app. So there's not going to be a
• 6:38
  messaging app, there's not going to be like Apple pay and
• 6:42
  iMessage and you know, all that stuff.
• 6:45
  It's all going to be in one place and it's just going to be
• 6:47
  in one app whether it's going to be X or it's going to be
• 6:50
  Twitter. So we'll see in the we'll see in
• 6:53
  the future about that but one of the employees reached out to The
• 6:57
  Verge and I said I feel like musk is forcing Is to make this
• 7:00
  decision on Blind Faith, but he hasn't done anything to earn our
• 7:04
  trust. If we stay, there's no guarantee
• 7:07
  our jobs will be safe or if our teams will exist, if everyone
• 7:11
  leaves. So could you imagine the company
• 7:14
  says, hey what give you two months of pay?
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  Ilan backblaze.com Ceylon tea want to Stay here if you want to
• 9:30
  leave. But there's also this other
• 9:32
  condition that we didn't really tell you yet, or if that's if
• 9:35
  you leave and if you stay your jobs, okay.
• 9:38
  For now. But you may also get fired in
• 9:41
  the future. So it's uncertain times for all
• 9:43
  these people. I've been in situations like
• 9:45
  this, it's no fun, it's no fun. But what if everybody left think
• 9:49
  about that for a second? What if everyone just said like
• 9:51
  you know what? We don't like Ilan.
• 9:53
  We don't like the idea. What if everybody left?
• 9:56
  Thousands of people to said, see you later, peace out word.
• 9:59
  On. They would have to go out a
• 10:01
  massive hiring spree and that would take some time because
• 10:05
  hiring one person may take months, they could get some
• 10:07
  people in there to run the show. I'm sure but engineers and other
• 10:11
  people in the, in the industry would probably turn away from an
• 10:15
  offer from Twitter. Some of them would a lot of them
• 10:18
  would probably go for it though because it seems like every Elon
• 10:21
  Musk company. It, it's been, you know, it
• 10:24
  happened. Everyone must company that's
• 10:26
  happen. Basically has been a success or
• 10:29
  is verging on success. So Tesla SpaceX, now Twitter,
• 10:34
  you know. They said their growth is up now
• 10:36
  so we'll see. We'll see what happens in the
• 10:39
  near future but there's a concern for employees.
• 10:42
  What would happen to people with visas though, of there won't be
• 10:45
  any additional accommodations of the remain employed through the
• 10:48
  non-working period and employees with precarious immigration
• 10:52
  status will likely need to stay at Twitter or find a new job to
• 10:57
  stay in the United States. That's kind of a gray area
• 11:02
  there, too. And that's a whole other
• 11:04
  subject. They have a work visa into
• 11:07
  coming to the u.s. basically, guaranteed, your status as
• 11:11
  staying in the US while you're working here and then all of the
• 11:13
  sudden your company gets sold, the rug gets pulled out from
• 11:17
  underneath you. And somebody comes in to say
• 11:22
  we're done, you're done here and they fire you but now you have a
• 11:25
  choice. You're going to stay, you know,
• 11:27
  the people you don't. You have another job offer.
• 11:30
  Like there's really no reason for you to say no at this point
• 11:34
  with Twitter because there's, you know, you have to have job
• 11:37
  security, you have to, you have to feed your family, you have a
• 11:40
  mortgage maybe or you're renting a place and maybe have a vehicle
• 11:44
  or something like that. You have payments, you have to
• 11:45
  pay those bills but for the employees that do stick around
• 11:49
  this is going to be a pretty big uphill battle.
• 11:53
  So you Lon want some to perform at the highest level in a how we
• 11:57
  work kind of section a Twitter has It says that employees have
• 12:01
  to be in the office now with exceptions considered on a
• 12:06
  case-to-case basis so you can't really work remotely anymore.
• 12:11
  Working outside of business hours, may be required including
• 12:14
  weekends and people at Twitter it's a legacy Internet Brand.
• 12:19
  So they're not used to this kind of stuff, people have the, the
• 12:23
  normal way that they work nine to five ninety seven, something
• 12:26
  like that, you know, that those kind of situations.
• 12:28
  But then there's There was a lot of flexibility to, and that's
• 12:32
  what made Twitter, what it was. And now, it's something
• 12:35
  completely different. It's in a start-up culture,
• 12:37
  which basically says, look, we're going to make everything
• 12:41
  as fast as possible, and you're going to do it on all of your
• 12:45
  time. I did the startup culture for a
• 12:48
  while. I'm one of those people from the
• 12:50
  early dot-coms I had a little personal side note.
• 12:55
  I had a couple companies that I sold in the early, the early
• 12:58
  dot-coms and they Aqua hires and I know what it's like to work at
• 13:02
  a start-up. I worked in numerous startups
• 13:04
  after that as a coder and it is not fun.
• 13:07
  So people that are not used to that or people that have been
• 13:10
  there through the legacy of Twitter there.
• 13:12
  You might not stick around for a while, they might say yes for
• 13:16
  now, but with the option that like, hey, I'm I'm out of here
• 13:19
  in two or three months, once I find a more lucrative position,
• 13:22
  or maybe, maybe I just find a better work-life environment
• 13:26
  where I don't have to work from like 7:00 in the The morning
• 13:30
  till midnight every day like that?
• 13:33
  That's horrible. So could be stock options to
• 13:36
  people have been saying that, like, internal people have been
• 13:39
  saying that musk says, there's exponential or exceptional
• 13:44
  performance will be rewarded with exceptional amounts of
• 13:48
  stock. So, whatever that is at this
• 13:51
  point, is Elon going to take the private for a while and he
• 13:55
  builds the company up and then he takes it public again and
• 13:57
  then those stock options. Then you have millions of
• 14:01
  dollars in your bank account, like, would you sacrifice that,
• 14:04
  you know, is that something that you're willing to do?
• 14:07
  Well, Elon hope so. Ilan hopes.
• 14:10
  You'll bust your butt forum and Twitter.
• 14:13
  Twitter blew up over this. Yeah, there's, there's tons of
• 14:16
  threads on Twitter about this from employees ex-employees.
• 14:20
  People who shall not be named new accounts that have been
• 14:23
  like, ghost accounts of people that say they worked at Twitter,
• 14:25
  people that have the Insight information, people with leeks.
• 14:29
  For posting them on Twitter and the, the consensus is, it's
• 14:34
  gonna be a rough transition for a little while and give it a
• 14:37
  couple months. And they'll kind of that this
• 14:40
  whole working your butt off for somebody for the idea of this
• 14:45
  new thing is, it's not new. Yeah, this is something that's
• 14:49
  been happening since the beginning of time.
• 14:51
  Since since, let's think about this, the Henry Ford in the his
• 14:56
  plants people would work day and night.
• 14:59
  And they would love it because they saw the vision.
• 15:02
  You know, this isn't a new thing.
• 15:04
  This is this is an Elan being new and competitive in a way
• 15:08
  that hasn't been done before like this has been done
• 15:10
  throughout the throughout Humanity.
• 15:12
  Like if you see the light at the end of the tunnel you go, hey I
• 15:16
  want to be part of that. I want to be part of something
• 15:18
  that's bigger than me and maybe some people are staying on for
• 15:21
  that. Yeah I'm sure a lot of these
• 15:23
  Twitter employees right now they're going to stay on for
• 15:25
  that so they only have a few hours left to decide.
• 15:29
  Today and see if they want to stay and that's it. 5:00 p.m. on
• 15:34
  Thursday. And tomorrow, I'll bring you the
• 15:37
  information about what happened to these people in, then we'll
• 15:41
  go from there. So Twitter is going to have a
• 15:43
  smaller Workforce going forward. We're going to have a smaller
• 15:46
  team, it's going to be more agile.
• 15:47
  They'll be able to do things faster.
• 15:50
  They'll be able to, what is the, what is this saying?
• 15:52
  I move fast and break stuff. I think it was sucker.
• 15:54
  Zuckerberg said it's some point in, like that was the mantra for
• 15:58
  so long and Valley, just get it done.
• 16:01
  You know, you have an idea, let's bust it out, you know,
• 16:03
  sounds great, let's let's throw it together, make it work and
• 16:06
  then we'll scale as we go and Patch it as we go.
• 16:09
  So there's going to be more information coming out in the
• 16:12
  next few hours about this, and I'll keep you up to date.
• 16:15
  You can follow me on Twitter at space news pod and if you're
• 16:18
  into space flight, you can go to Starship shirts.com, check out
• 16:22
  our merch store NASA assured SpaceX inspired shirts, Ilan
• 16:26
  shirts, things like that. So thank you very much for that.
• 16:29
  And also, if you could just take a second and subscribe to the
• 16:32
  show, it only takes a brief second, you get all the Ilan
• 16:35
  information that you could ever handle on this channel.
• 16:38
  So thank you very much for that. I do appreciate you.
• 16:41
  My name is, Will Walden is the Elon Musk podcast and I will see
• 16:45
  you next time. Take care everybody.
• 16:46
  Bye-bye.