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Twitter has reportedly reached out to dozens of employees who were fired last week, asking them to resume their roles.
The social media giant laid off roughly half its staff last week, following Elon Musk's $44 billion acquisition. But according to Reuters news agency, some of those who were dismissed are being asked to return.
Some of those who are being asked to return were laid off by mistake, while others were let go before management realized that their work and experience may be necessary to build the new features Musk envisions, according to Bloomberg sources.
Will they want to come back?
Of course, a big issue is whether employees will want to come back and work under the leadership of Musk, who has already made sweeping changes to the ways the company operates.
One Twitter employee told Reuters that "days of rest," which are highly popular company-wide days off, have been removed from calendars for the rest of the year.
Musk is also known to be a demanding employer and a workaholic who regularly works 120-hour weeks.
"Because of the pressure that he puts on his entire executive team, his senior leadership team, even if they have the experience, they wouldn't dare speak up against him," one former Tesla employee told Business Insider.
And, as he has already done at his other companies like Tesla, Musk has reportedly put an end to Twitter’s “work from anywhere” policy, brought in after the coronavirus pandemic. This is a move that could have a drastic impact staff who survive Musk’s mass cull.
A 2022 study commissioned by SafetyWing, surveyed more than 4,000 in-office and remote workers spanning four continents as part of its Remote Retention whitepaper.
It found that the majority of remote workers have increased their productivity and expanded their skillsets. Almost three quarters of remote workers are satisfied with their working environment, compared to 66% of office workers. Meanwhile, 83% of remote workers report feeling more motivated by their flexibility at work, and 78% say they’re motivated by their great work-life balance
Fear and silence
Undoubtedly, whilst their employment status still hangs by a thread, many staff will be fearful of expressing concern. After all, considering he dubs himself a “free speech absolutist”, Musk notoriously doesn’t like criticism.
In July, his other firm SpaceX fired a group of employees who criticised their billionaire boss in an open letter.
Reports in the New York Times claimed SpaceX employees penned the letter denouncing Musk’s activity on Twitter, describing his behaviour as “a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment” and asked the company to “rein him in.”
The open letter called to SpaceX’s leaders to “publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful Twitter behavior” and “define and uniformly respond to all forms of unacceptable behavior.”
However, in an email obtained by NYT, SpaceX’s president and COO, Gwynne Shotwell, revealed that an unconfirmed number of the letter’s organizers had subsequently been fired.
Similarly, eight of nine former Tesla employees who shared their experience of working with him with Business Insider magazine demanded anonymity for fear of reprisal.
