This year-end employee benefit sheds a very bright light as to why Musk is in such a hurry to get the lay-offs done. As reported last week:
The forthcoming layoffs are likely to occur before November 1st. The timing may give Musk the opportunity to avoid paying out stock grants to outgoing workers. According to The Times, such payouts “typically represent a significant portion” of an employee’s pay.
The New York Times report this weekend he plans to lay off employees before Tuesday, November 1, thus cutting staff off from receiving stock grants as part of their compensation.
In response to a tweet from Eric Umansky, deputy managing editor of ProPublica, that said Musk was “making sure to fire people at Twitter before part of their year-end compensation kicks in on Tuesday,” Musk said: “This is false.” He didn’t provide any clarification about what, specifically, was false.
What a guy. @elonmusk is making sure to fire people at Twitter before part of their year-end compensation *kicks in on Tuesday.* https://t.co/sEclZozKV5 pic.twitter.com/inw3vF0kIL
— Eric Umansky (@ericuman) October 29, 2022
At the time of writing this post it is little before 13:00 EDT and so far no news of layoffs (except for the now disbanded Twitter Board of Directors.) Seems the Chief Twit’s attention has shifted to his planned redesign of the premium Twitter Blue service with a quadruple monthly fee ($5 to $20/month) which would include a verification badge. Though he did give an ultimatum to those employees responsible for revamping this service; get it done by November 7th or be fired. But then early this morning he was talking about reviving Vine. He would need development and other staff if he wants to go through with the endeavor of not only reviling Vine but making it an integrated part of Twitter (versus its own app). Not to say, that he wouldn’t go forth with the layoffs ‘to avoid paying out stock grants’ and then hire new talent.
As I said earlier, Musk needs to understand his customer/user (and revenue) base with Twitter is far different (and larger) than that of SpaceX or Tesla. Further, this customer/user base will very quickly move to another platform (although Meta’s Instagram is having its own issues earlier this morning) if they find Twitter is no longer suitable for their needs. Even more so if Chief Twit action’s tarnishes their opinion of him and/or Twitter (and they WILL let him know exactly how they feel).
via Tech Crunch
