Insider by Kali Hays Aug 17, 2022
Elon Musk's bitter fight over Twitter is causing an 'absurdly high' number of employees to flee the social media company for other jobs as they lose faith in leadership• An increasing number of Twitter employees are leaving the company, insiders say.
• Stress from Elon Musk's acquisition, along with "poor" executive leadership, is the cause.
• So many people have left recently that Twitter changed the way it categorizes attrition.
A steady stream of Twitter employees have left the company in recent weeks, fed up with the ongoing drama of Elon Musk's stalled acquisition, how executive leadership has handled it, or both.
"I'm just mentally exhausted," one current employee who is actively looking to leave the company said. They pointed to the media attention Musk's involvement in the company has generated, which has become a regular distraction for many employees. Internally, there is frequent speculation on the ongoing lawsuit Twitter filed against Musk to enforce his April agreement to buy the company for $44 billion and what the end result will be.
Another worker said they and many colleagues effectively lost respect for executive leadership at the company, led by CEO Parag Agrawal, due to the way "the Musk situation" has been handled and communicated. Agrawal took over from co-founder Jack Dorsey late last year after spending many years in engineering roles at the company.
"The general consensus among the majority of us is they're doing a poor job," said an employee who just left the company for another in the tech field. The communication since Musk launched his takeover-turned acquisition-turned lawsuit has been too vague, the person said, with "fiduciary duty" becoming an inside joke on internal Slack channels. The phrase was used in almost every communication from executives to employees about Musk in the early weeks of the acquisition. Now, communication about the deal and the lawsuit is almost non-existent, save for brief missives from company lawyers. Combined with sudden firings of executives, a hiring freeze, and layoffs, workers feel further blindsided by changes and C-suite decisions.
More:
https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-workers-fleeing-the-company-as-elon-musk-deal-drags-on-2022-8
