What's this? This is an unbiased just-the-facts news timeline ('newsline') about Elon Musk, created by Newslines contributors. Become a contributor

Elon Musk

Elon Musk409 posts

Elon Musk is a South-African born Canadian-American engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur, born in 1971. He was a co-founder of PayPal, which was sold to Ebay for $1.5 billion. He then founded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Tesla Motors. He is chief executive and chief designer at SpaceX and CEO and head of product design at Tesla and chairman of Solar City. Musk purchased Twitter in September 2022.

Biography view > Click for Latest News view
4 Nov, 2022

Twitter fires 50% of staff by email

Layoffs0 Comments

Twitter begins laying off up to 50% of its workforce, sending a mail titled Your Role at Twitter to the personal emails of laid-off employees.

Today is your last working day at the company.

Those laid off will remain employed by Twitter and receive compensation and benefits until the first week of January 2023, though the date may vary. Affected employees are locked out of their Twitter systems, such as email and Slack, and have been told that they will receive their non-negotiable severance offer within the week, when they are required to hand in their badges and company laptops or computers. In other emails the company acknowledges the impact of the layoffs:

We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.

18 Nov, 2022

Over 1000 staff leave Twitter after Musk’s ultimatum

Layoffs0 Comments

Fortune magazine estimates that Twitter loses 1000-1200 staff, out of 2700 remaining, including multiple ‘critical’ engineering teams after Musk send a mail asking staff to commit to hardcore work or leave the company. A former emplyee said the resignations will affect the company’s perfomance.

I know of six critical systems (like ‘serving tweets’ levels of critical) which no longer have any engineers. There is no longer even a skeleton crew manning the system. It will continue to coast until it runs into something, and then it will stop.

The estimated 2,500 who are said to remain, have been locked out of their offices until Monday at least over fears they could sabotage the site. Many staff shared their departures on social media, including Twitter staff in Boston, who counted down their final seconds in the company.

Following the mass resignations, Musk sends an email asking ‘anyone who actually writes software’ to meet him at the Silicon Valley office on Friday at 2pm:

Anyone who actually writes software, please report to the 10th floor at 2 pm today. Before doing so, please email a bullet point summary of what your code commands have achieved in the past ~6 months, along with up to 10 screenshots of the most salient lines of code,” Musk wrote in the first of three emails reportedly sent around midnight PT Friday.

3 May, 2023

Twitter down to 1000 employees

Layoffs0 Comments

Twitter downsizes to only 1,000 employees, including about 500 engineers, about 90% less than worked for the platform just before Musk took over. One employee states, “performance reviews are constant,” leading to frequent firings with little to no explanation given and causing remaining workers scramble to meet demands. Even before the slash, hundreds of workers had already left. Musk:

The issue is like the company’s going to go bankrupt if we do not cut costs immediately. This is not a caring, uncaring situation. It’s like if the whole ship sinks then nobody’s got a job.