Musk tripling down on being a dick

Elon Musk emailed Twitter staff on Friday asking that any employees who write software code report to the 10th floor of the office in San Francisco in the early afternoon, according to multiple news reports.

The billionaire said in a follow-up email, “If possible, I would appreciate it if you could fly to SF to be present in person,” adding he would be at the company’s headquarters until midnight and would return Saturday morning, Reuters reported. The engineers should report at 2pm on Friday.

[...]

Musk said he would try to speak with remote employees by video, and that only people who could not physically get to the company’s headquarters or had a family emergency would be excused.

  Guardian

Slave driving tyrant. I hope he was offering to pay for their flights, but that wouldn't fit with the way he's been handling everything. (And why "the billionaire" and not "Musk"?)

In his first email to Twitter employees this month, Musk said: “We are also changing Twitter policy such that remote work is no longer allowed, unless you have a specific exception.

“Managers will send the exceptions lists to me for review and approval.”

[...]

Meanwhile, Musk started a Twitter poll late on Friday asking followers to vote on whether to reinstate former US president Donald Trump’s account on the platform. Early results showed roughly 60% voting yes.

Rigged!

Is Musk actually trying to keep Twitter going? Perhaps it depends on his poll results.

Posting his poll on whether to reinstate Trump to the platform, Musk tweeted “Vox Populi, Vox Dei”, using a Latin phrase that roughly means “the voice of the people is the voice of God”. The poll was open for 24 hours.

Can I get an eye roll? Christ. Spoken to the rubes like a true dictator.*

The company had told employees it would close its offices and cut badge access until Monday, Reuters reported, citing two unnamed sources, and it was not immediately known whether the headquarters had reopened.

[...]

Musk’s emails came a day after reports indicated between 1,000 and 1,200 Twitter employees decided to quit the beleaguered social media company following a Thursday deadline from Musk that staffers sign up for “long hours at high intensity”, or leave.

[...]

Musk [had] ordered employees to email him a summary of what their software code had “achieved” in the past six months, “along with up to 10 screenshots of the most salient lines of code”.

As if he knows code?  

Musk said this week that some Tesla engineers were assisting in evaluating Twitter’s engineering teams, but he said it was on a “voluntary basis” and “after hours”.

WTF. Are they quitting in droves at Tesla, too?

Yoel Roth, the former head of trust and safety who was tapped to assuage concerns advertisers had with the platform, said in a New York Times op-ed that he had chosen to resign last week because it was clear Musk would be unilaterally calling the shots. “A Twitter whose policies are defined by unilateral edict has little need for a trust and safety function dedicated to its principled development,” Roth wrote.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

*Also...