Elon Musk cuts free meals for Twitter employees, arguing no on was within the workplace to eat them

The reasoning might defy logic now that he has ended the privilege of distant working instituted by Jack Dorsey in October 2020, however it’s emblematic of the corporate’s acute monetary hassle. 

Twitter is shedding over $4 million every day by Musk’s rely, and it faces a reported $1 billion in further curiosity funds to cowl the $13 billion in debt Musk piled onto the corporate as a part of the deal.

Spending cuts at Twitter have been a divisive subject with some seeing Musk’s cuts as a draconian try to recoup the cash on his overpaid funding, whereas others have little sympathy as eliminating perks are naturally one of many first levers to tug when restructuring an organization deeply within the crimson. 

Musk mentioned Twitter spent an estimated $400-plus per lunch served, or roughly $13 million a 12 months for its San Francisco headquarters.

A part of the explanation for the excessive per-meal price, he outpointed, was the extraordinarily low workplace attendance. Occupancy on a mean day was clocked at lower than 10%.  

Twitter’s vp of actual property, Tracy Hawkins, disagreed along with his calculation nonetheless, saying attendance was a lot greater—wherever from 20% to 50% within the places of work. 

“That’s a lie,” posted Hawkins, who mentioned she resigned reasonably than work for Musk. “For breakfast and lunch we spent $20-$25 a day per particular person. This enabled workers to work by means of lunchtime and conferences.” 

Musk’s bumpy experience to date

It wasn’t the one time an worker at Twitter has known as out Musk. On Sunday he additionally apologized to Twitter customers overseas for gradual efficiency, blaming it on the infrastructure. 

But Sasha Solomon, the tech lead on Twitter questioned whether or not he really understood the programming language. 

“You didn’t simply layoff nearly all of infra after which make some sassy comment,” she wrote. “Did you trouble to even learn the way GraphQL works?”

Musk’s reign as proprietor of Twitter has been transient, however already it has created extra drama than the social media platform had in years.

Hate speech spiked amid a loss in content material moderation, imposter accounts multiplied like weeds, firms yanked their promoting, and employees have been sacked in a chaotic mass culling.

As a substitute of calming nerves, the “chief twit” himself has helped inflame them, utilizing his platform to assault critics and opponents alike, warning at one level he would unleash a “thermonuclear identify and disgrace” on firms that succumbed to what he has blasted as activist strain and pulled their advertisements. 

To make issues worse, Twitter’s highest-ranking compliance officers stop as Musk reportedly dangers billions in regulatory fines for not complying with a consent decree reached in Might with the Federal Commerce Fee. 

The reputational damage alone he has brought on to the model has some folks speculating he hopes to write down off the $44 billion as a huge reservoir of private tax losses to offset features from the sale of Tesla shares going ahead.

“The one solace is losses for tax functions. As soon as their inventory is discovered to be nugatory, they’re entitled to capital-loss deductions in an quantity equal to their foundation within the inventory,“ accounting knowledgeable Robert Willens advised Barron’s.

Musk in the meantime continues undeterred along with his plan to strike one other key perk to Twitter’s workers with the intention to keep at bay the menace of chapter.

“There are extra folks making ready breakfast than consuming breakfast,” he posted on Sunday.

It’s protected to say that with employees compelled to return to the workplace, that can not be the case.

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