Elon Musk buys and ruins Twitter

[domalino]

3 out of 4 employees have left since he took over. It’s a skeleton staff now working and Musk has drafted in software engineers from SpaceX to try and keep it running over the weekend.

It's actually closer to 90%

They had 7000+, he fired half of them, taking it down to 3700, and now 3/4 of those have rejected Twitter 2.0.

They're down to ~900 from 7000 2 weeks ago.

So far we've heard from journalists that the entire payroll team, the whole team doing Elon's Twitter Blue, The US tax and financial reporting teams and the people who can securely lock out fired employees. The legal team was gutted in the firings and most of the senior management got fired or resigned on takeover.

I wonder how the other 53% owners of SpaceX feel about him taking away resources from their company.

 

[Gareth Barry Conlon]

It's actually closer to 90%

They had 7000+, he fired half of them, taking it down to 3700, and now 3/4 of those have rejected Twitter 2.0.

They're down to ~900 from 7000 2 weeks ago.

So far we've heard from journalists that the entire payroll team, the whole team doing Elon's Twitter Blue, The US tax and financial reporting teams and the people who can securely lock out fired employees. The legal team was gutted in the firings and most of the senior management got fired or resigned on takeover.

I wonder how the other 53% owners of SpaceX feel about him taking away resources from their company.

If you are a share holder of Tesla or SpaceX you want this guy off the board and out of sight ASAP.

Clearly has no concept of the conflict in having 2 separate businesses and using staff from 1 to cover and assist when gutting staff from the other.

I imagine the Banks that helped fund the acquisition are shitting it. They would have made a big pitch on the basis Musk is a genius. Not looking so good right now.

 

[domalino]

I imagine the Banks that helped fund the acquisition are shitting it. They would have made a big pitch on the basis Musk is a genius. Not looking so good right now.

I would imagine the opposite! All of his loans were secured with TSLA stock, so if Twitter dies, they're cashing in.

 

[bonespost]

 

[grunge]

It's actually closer to 90%

They had 7000+, he fired half of them, taking it down to 3700, and now 3/4 of those have rejected Twitter 2.0.

They're down to ~900 from 7000 2 weeks ago.

So far we've heard from journalists that the entire payroll team, the whole team doing Elon's Twitter Blue, The US tax and financial reporting teams and the people who can securely lock out fired employees. The legal team was gutted in the firings and most of the senior management got fired or resigned on takeover.

I wonder how the other 53% owners of SpaceX feel about him taking away resources from their company.

Do you have any links for those figures please?

 

[domalino]

Do you have any links for those figures please?

 

[Gareth Barry Conlon]

I would imagine the opposite! All of his loans were secured with TSLA stock, so if Twitter dies, they're cashing in.

It's never that easy for them. Enforcing security by a bank is a long drawn out legal process full of uncertainty. What they want is Twitter to pay back the money borrowed - that is not looking good.

And that is without even looking at the Tesla stock trend (down 50% in the last year).

 

[domalino]

It's never that easy for them. Enforcing security by a bank is a long drawn out legal process full of uncertainty. What they want is Twitter to pay back the money borrowed - that is not looking good.

And that is without even looking at the Tesla stock trend (down 50% in the last year).

I don’t know, people have suggested they want Twitter to fail because the banks haven’t packaged and resold the debt, which would be standard practice.

They’ve held onto the liability because they want the prize at the end of default.

Also I think the guarantee is $X of Tesla shares, not Y amount of teslas shares that are worth half as much as they were in April.

 

[waspish]

He probably move all the jobs to a country where it cost next to nought to pay them!

 

[Gareth Barry Conlon]

I don’t know, people have suggested they want Twitter to fail because the banks haven’t packaged and resold the debt, which would be standard practice.

They’ve held onto the liability because they want the prize at the end of default.

Also I think the guarantee is $X of Tesla shares, not Y amount of teslas shares that are worth half as much as they were in April.

There is no 'prize at the end' with a default. You can only claim back the outstanding debt+interest+fees. But that excludes any management time. And you have to carry the debt as a default on the banks books wile it drags through and that has big implications for banks capital requirements. There is some scope for shady practice* in the past but its generally individuals within a bank conspiring with others to make money - Banks do not make money from defaults (its close to my line of work).

An employee with knowledge of a loan/default can work with external professionals and investors to push defaults and ensure others can buy assets at discounted price. This is mitigated by laws around separation of duties in banks and the insolvency process laws.

If the Banks involved haven't sold down the twitter debt that suggests to me its because they cant - or not at the price they want. Seems 100% plausible.