Life Under Musk: Two Twitter Employees Speak Out

“We cross our fingers and hope to make it through another day.” Twitter hasn’t spoken publicly since Elon Musk bought the company a week ago. But inside, employees describe a mood of fear, chaos, stress and bizarre requests to print out code.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:26Casey Newton?

  So Kevin, I've noticed something about a lot of the people running Twitter right now.

• 0:32Kevin Roose?

  What would that be?

• 0:32Casey Newton?

  Okay, so you know David Sacks, Jason Calacanis, Riram Krishnan have all been sort of volunteered into this war room to help Elon run the company.

• 0:42Kevin Roose?

  Right, they are members of the Elon Musk Twitter Brain Trust.

• 0:45Casey Newton?

  And if you've heard their names before, maybe it's because they're venture capitalists, they're sort of known in that field, but they're also something else. They're podcasters.

• 0:54Kevin Roose?

  Podcasters, baby.

• 0:56Casey Newton?

  And that means that for the first time in history, we have a social network that's effectively being run by podcasters.

• 1:03Kevin Roose?

  This is our moment. This is our opening. I think if we, the deal is if we spend three weeks at the top of the tech podcast charts, we officially run Twitter.

• 1:11Casey Newton?

  That's right.

• 1:12Kevin Roose?

  Is that how this works?

• 1:13Casey Newton?

  Yes. Every reporter's dream to run Twitter.

• 1:26Kevin Roose?

  I'm Kevin Ruze, tech columnist for The New York Times.

• 1:28Casey Newton?

  And I'm Casey Newton from Platformer.

• 1:30Kevin Roose?

  And you're listening to Hard Fork.

• 1:51Kevin Roose?

  So usually on this podcast, we're going to try to bring people news from around the tech industry, give a more comprehensive sense of what's happening in Silicon Valley. But right now, the only story that anyone in tech cares about is what's happening just down the street from us in San Francisco at Twitter. We're going to talk to two Twitter employees, or at least two people who were Twitter employees as of Wednesday morning. Not sure what their status is going to be by the time you hear this, about what's happening inside of Twitter. And we're going to let you hear them, or hear, to be precise, an AI-generated version of them. So what we're going to do is talk to them, like have a normal interview. But instead of playing you their voice,

• 2:35Kevin Roose?

  which would de-anonymize them and risk getting them in trouble or getting them fired, we are going to transcribe what they say. And then we're going to feed those words back into a text-to-speech AI generator and play you an AI-generated version of their voice. And we should say upfront, like, these voices, they're not going to sound 100% exactly human. It's going to be a little weird and frankly robotic. But just remember as you listen that these words were spoken by actual human Twitter employees. And that this is really the only way to get them on the record

• 3:18Kevin Roose?

  and get a real picture of what's happening inside Twitter right now.

• 3:22Casey Newton?

  I like that when we started the show, we said we would never put on AI voices unless we had like a really good reason and a really limited capacity. And now twice in five episodes, we've been like, now, here are the AI voices.

• 3:35Kevin Roose?

  Well, you were wrong about Elon buying Twitter and you were wrong about this not being a podcast filled with robot podcasters. So two strikes for Casey. But before we get to those interviews, let's just go over what's been happening at Twitter this week. Because it has been one crazy thing after another. Casey, on Friday, after our emergency podcast, you reported that Twitter engineers inside the company had been instructed to print out the last 30 to 60 days worth of code that they had written for review.

• 4:09Casey Newton?

  Yeah, and this is one of the, you know, sometimes as a reporter, you get a tip that sounds so silly that you think, well, this couldn't possibly be true. So when I got this tip that Elon and his people were telling people, print out your last 30 to 60 days of code, I thought, well, that can be true. And in fact, two of my sources are like, Casey, that doesn't sound right to me. Okay. But then I start texting around, start getting on the phone with some folks, and then the two people that told me that I was wrong came back to me and they said, oh, my God, he's actually asking people to print out their code. So, you know, why is this funny? Why is this interesting? This is a weird way to evaluate how good someone is as a software engineer. People are generally not evaluated by how much code they've written. If you, if you show up with a printout of 100 pages of code, that's not necessarily a good thing.

• 4:53Casey Newton?

  You might have done better for the company by eliminating some code, right? And then sort of streamlining it. So.

• 4:57Kevin Roose?

  Right. Also, who prints code? Like, it's not like, I was surprised that the coding programs actually have a print button in them, because that's like, not what you're bringing to your, like, daily review of your code.

• 5:09Casey Newton?

  Right. Also, like, they just had this situation where their, like, former chief security officer was complaining that they had really lax security practices and, like, filed this whistleblower complaint. And now the fact that, like, all the Twitter engineers are just printing out the code base and leaving it around Twitter headquarters?

• 5:22Kevin Roose?

  Incredible.

• 5:24Casey Newton?

  It's like, two hours later, they get, all the Twitter folks get this new notification. It's like, change of plans, Elon and his folks, they still want to see your code, but why don't you just bring it in on your laptop? And if you have printed out any code, we're gonna need you to shred it. And so all the Twitter engineers have to, like, run to the paper shredder on the 10th floor, I believe, and just start shredding the code base.

• 5:45Kevin Roose?

  I mean, this sounds, honestly, it's a little, it's, it's giving Dunder Mifflin. It's like, like, there's just this boss in charge who, like, doesn't really seem to know what he's doing, and everyone's just kind of humoring him. But it's not, it's not the kind of thing that usually happens at a big tech company.

• 6:05Casey Newton?

  It's not. Now, one thing that we should say is that the Elon folks are obsessed with figuring out who is a good engineer at the company, right? So Elon very much, like, worships at the altar of the engineer. He considers himself an engineer. And so I've talked to folks who like are getting calls late at night from random Tesla engineers saying things like, you know, who's really good on your team, you know, who are the top performers, who are the low performers? And so this code printout exercise, as ridiculous as it seems, was all part of this sort of evaluation system where they've been trying to figure out who at this company do we need to keep in order to keep the service running?

• 6:41Kevin Roose?

  And who can we lay off? That's sort of the unspoken piece of this. Okay, so we have this code printing fiasco. Then on Sunday, you reported that Twitter was considering tying verifications to Twitter Blue subscriptions. And explain what that means.

• 6:56Casey Newton?

  Yeah, so Twitter Blue is a subscription service that gives you access to a handful of other features. You can see the top articles of the day. You have this new test feature that lets you edit tweets. We don't know how many people subscribe to Twitter Blue. The company has never released a metric. What we know is that 89% of this company's revenues comes from digital advertising, and the bulk of the rest comes from sort of selling access to their API. So Twitter Blue, however many people subscribe to it, has never been a major source of revenue.

• 7:28Kevin Roose?

  But the Elon folks who are under this huge pressure to start making money in a hurry have been looking for new revenue ideas. And one revenue idea that came up basically right away was to make people pay for Twitter Blue in order to keep their verification badges.

• 7:42Casey Newton?

  Twitter Blue costs five bucks a month. A few hours after I wrote that story, Alex Heath at The Verge reported that they were considering charging up to $20 a month to keep the verification badge. And I think it's fair to say that that made the entire Twitter timeline just melt down.

• 7:54Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, people, including Stephen King, the horror author, he tweeted, $20 a month to keep my blue check? Fuck that. They should pay me. If that gets instituted, I'm gone like Enron.

• 8:06Casey Newton?

  Wait, let me just say, Stephen King has written about some of the most terrifying horrors imaginable, and nothing scared him more than the idea of paying $20 a month for his verification badge. Move over it!

• 8:17Kevin Roose?

  So let's take a moment and talk about this idea of paying for verification on Twitter, because I think it's an interesting idea. It seems to be kind of their big first idea for how to change Twitter's So right now, the way that people get verified on Twitter is sort of mysterious. I got verified like a decade ago because someone at the news company that I worked at put my name on a list and all of a sudden I had a checkmark by my name.

• 8:42Casey Newton?

  Same for me.

• 8:43Kevin Roose?

  And I think that's how a lot of journalists get verified, but there's also a process. You can, you know, ask to be verified if you're a celebrity or something. And the reason the verification exists, we should say, like, it's not about a status marker. It's not about like this person's important. It was literally created because people like Oprah were joining Twitter many, many years ago, and there were already a ton of imposters on Twitter saying that they were people like Oprah. And so Twitter needed a way to basically allow users to tell whether the person they were talking to was actually the person they purported to be.

• 9:18Casey Newton?

  Yeah, and I think it's fair to say, like, this is a necessary feature of the platform. Every platform that is, you know, social in some way has a feature like this. Facebook, Instagram, Snap, TikTok, right? You need a way to say like, this is the real Oprah and that is not the real Oprah. You know, Twitter verification started because Tony La Russa, the baseball manager, sued the company because he was being impersonated. And he was basically like, you know, this is harmful to my reputation that you have these fake Tony La Russas running around. So it's only natural that such a thing would exist. And now the question is, are you really going to charge people for that, that privilege of just, you know, not being impersonated?

• 9:51Kevin Roose?

  Right. And I think it's fair to say that over the years, like, people have come to see these checkmarks next to your Twitter name as sort of a status symbol, right? Like, it means that you're someone, it means that, you know, it's-

• 10:02Casey Newton?

  It means that you're worth impersonating.

• 10:04Kevin Roose?

  Right, exactly. And so I think the idea initially coming out of the Elon War Room was that people were, who were verified, cared so much about being verified and staying verified that they would pay for the privilege. And so that's where we get this idea of $20 a month for verification. Now, that almost immediately results in, as you said, an entire Twitter timeline meltdown where users are saying, no way will we pay $20 a month. That's more than I pay for Netflix, that's more than I pay for YouTube, like, just to keep my little checkmark, like, that seems insane. Subsequently, Elon responds to Stephen King on- Twitter and says, we need to pay the bills somehow. Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?

• 10:47Kevin Roose?

  So Stephen King has become the pricing consultant for Twitter verification.

• 10:52Casey Newton?

  I just love the idea that Elon is haggling with Stephen King over the price. Like it's like tomatoes at a farmer's market, you know?

• 10:58Kevin Roose?

  Well, here's my theory about it. Real quick is that I think that inside Elon world and inside frankly, a lot of right wing sort of circles, there's this idea of the blue checks, right? People on Fox News and other conservative media outlets are always talking about this sort of like blue check mob of people on Twitter, mostly journalists and other media figures who are sort of like self-important and care very deeply about their checkmarks. And so for them, this seems like a way to make money while at the same time kind of punishing the blue checkmarks, which is just very, very different from how other social media platforms treat their creators.

• 11:38Casey Newton?

  Yeah, I mean, look, I have to say, I have long been in favor of letting anyone who wants to verify themselves, right? Part of this plan, it's not just making people pay to keep their badge. It's also that if you pay, you could get a badge. And I think it would be good for Twitter and most social networks if anybody wanted to optionally verify their identity. Like that would be good for the credibility of the ecosystem overall. But it does come with a lot of questions that so far have mostly gone unanswered.

• 12:06Kevin Roose?

  And it also just seems to me like, like I, you know, I'm trying to keep an open mind. This could work. I have often thought that people who are power users of Twitter should be paying something for some of the features that are being talked about here. You know, it does create a lot of economic value for people like you and me. It does matter to us. News organizations pay for all kinds of software solutions that help them do various things. Maybe Twitter Blue should be part of that. But it also seems strange because it's just not that big a money-making idea. So I was doing some back of the envelope math on this. So right now there are about 400,000 people who are verified on Twitter. That's sort of the latest number that we have. If all of those people pay $8 a Month to keep their checkmarks.

• 12:51Kevin Roose?

  That's $38 million a year roughly. Twitter's second quarter revenue was $1.18 billion. So this is a drop in the bucket, even if everyone who is currently verified on Twitter pays $8 a month, which I don't think they will. And then say you get even, you know, that many more new people who are paying to get verified for the first time. Say you have 800,000 people paying for verification. That's still only about $80 million a year, which is frankly, not that much to a company like Twitter.

• 13:26Casey Newton?

  Right. Now, apparently Elon did say something like they're going to have maybe some sort of separate like legacy verification program for, you know, I don't know, government entities that aren't going to pay the $8 a month. So, you know, there's still a lot of details to be worked out here, but you know, if it seems like we're taking a long time talking about this. Again, worth saying that because Twitter is where so many folks go to get their news and information. It matters that we know who is who on that service. And so it's like, if they're starting to charge for it, if they're introducing this new confusion into it, then the risk is that, you know, within a month or so, there's just going to be way more misinformation, confusion, hoaxes and scams on Twitter because nobody knows who's who.

• 14:07Kevin Roose?

  Right. So that's not all that happened at Twitter this week. We've also had a number of other executives departing. Chief Customer Officer Sarah Personette resigned. A number of other senior Twitter executives have also announced that they are leaving. One other idea that's been floated from the Elon Brain Trust is bringing back Vine. Casey, how do you feel about that?

• 14:29Casey Newton?

  Well, look, I love Vine, like people are very nostalgic about Vine for a reason. It kind of ushered in the era of short form video that we're living in now. And, you know, I think many folks listening to the show can probably recite several vines from memory. For me, it's back at it again at the Krispy Kreme, one of the great moments of culture for the past 10 years. You know, at the same time, the culture has also moved on. The code base for Vine is 10 years old and the idea that it is now, um, you know, going to be revived and turned into a ticket. competitor, that's a really steep hill. I would also say like not an immediate revenue driver. Right? That's something they're they're just going to have to put a ton of effort into. You're essentially launching a new social network within Twitter. So that's a huge, heavy lift.

• 15:12Casey Newton?

  I think it could be fun to have a very like popular American short form video network that wasn't owned by Facebook or YouTube, but we'll just have to see if they can do it.

• 15:22Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, so that's the other big idea coming out of Elon's brain trust. And underneath all of these changes and announcements and changes to the announcements, there's just been this atmosphere of total chaos and confusion inside Twitter as engineers and other Twitter employees are getting extraordinary demands to make changes much more quickly than they otherwise would have.

• 15:44Casey Newton?

  That's right. They're being told you have days to ship this. If this does not ship by this date, you know, in some cases, a date next week, you will be fired. If it is one hour past deadline, you will be fired. So people are sleeping very little. They are sleeping in their offices and frankly, some of them are terrified. Some of them are here on work visas. If they lose this job, they have 60 days to find another job or they're out of the country. So it's it could not be more serious for the folks who have these jobs.

• 16:11Kevin Roose?

  A very, very stressful time and frankly, an unprecedented time. I I've never heard about anything like this happening at a major tech company. And so we have coming up interviews with two current Twitter employees who are there witnessing this all from the inside and we'll talk to them right after the break.

• 16:31Speaker 03

  Support for this podcast comes from Dell Technologies. It's time to put AI to work. Is your business ready? The challenge isn't getting started with AI. It's scaling beyond pilots while maintaining control of your data, governance, infrastructure and costs. Dell AI Factory provides the integrated foundation you need to scale AI securely and efficiently with one trusted partner, Dell. AI on your terms. From idea to impact. Learn more at dell.com/yourwaytoAI. That's dell.com/yourwaytoAI.

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• 18:15Kevin Roose?

  Great, and then just the plan is to transcribe your voice and then feed it back into some kind of, we have an AI text to speech.

• 18:25Speaker 06

  Awesome, thank you. I'm probably getting fired today, but don't need to expedite that or get sued.

• 18:31Kevin Roose?

  Right. And I just want to remind folks real quick, you are hearing a computer-generated voice, but behind that voice is a real person. Okay, so what should we call you?

• 18:43Speaker 06

  I had suggested Mockingjay, like from The Hunger Games.

• 18:46Kevin Roose?

  Welcome to Hard Fork, Mockingjay. So it is about 10 a.m. Pacific on Wednesday right now. How's your day going so far? Anything notable happen today?

• 18:58Speaker 06

  Every day seems to be the same cycle for the last week, which is everybody wakes up to more panicked messages via various different channels. I think most people have been smart enough to move off of Slack and into other channels, and it is this up and down of trying to chase rumors because we have had zero communications from anybody internally. In fact, there has been more external communication to twitter.com than there has been to Twitter the employees. So everything is just based on rumor. So we wake up, we look at all of our various channels, we look at what our friends are messaging us, and we cross our fingers and hope to make it through another day.

• 19:32Casey Newton?

  So what's that been like for you? What's your emotional state?

• 19:36Speaker 06

  Stressful. I feel like between trying to maintain this job that I have currently, while clearly looking for a way out, while having zero support and acknowledgement from the people above me, is very stressful. Already, there have been multiple rumor mill-based scares. First, of course, was that layoffs are supposed to happen Monday. They didn't happen. Now, the rumor has it it's going to be Friday. It's exhausting. I know we are all paid really well. Most of us have some savings to sit on. Some people don't. But it is also just nerve-wracking not to know, especially as we're entering a really tough hiring market in tech and also we're entering the holidays.

• 20:12Casey Newton?

  So just to really underline that, you have a new CEO at your company. Most of the C-suite has either been fired or resigned, and you have not received one email that says, here's who's in charge and here's the game plan for the next few days.

• 20:25Speaker 06

  That is 100% accurate. We have received zero information other than what gets trickled down to us. Comms is incredibly sparse. There is really nobody answering even messages in the company-wide channels.

• 20:37Casey Newton?

  And so what is that like when day-to-day, you wake up and it's almost like a scavenger hunt across seven different apps just to figure out what you're supposed to be doing?

• 20:49Speaker 06

  It's complete chaos. Some people are panicking. Some people are helping each other. Some people are throwing other people around them under the bus. You have probably heard and you have been reporting on some of the infamous code reviews. I have seen examples of people saying that code was written entirely by them and not crediting people who collaborated with them, all in hope that they will be on some preferred status list.

• 21:10Casey Newton?

  So people are sort of overstating their contributions in hopes of keeping their jobs?

• 21:15Speaker 06

  Absolutely. What they are asking for is volume, not quality. So everybody is sharing every little bit of code they have ever written, no matter how insignificant or garbage it is.

• 21:24Casey Newton?

  Yeah, I reported on a message from a manager who said, basically, if you don't know what you're working on right now, work on something, work on anything. Just code a project. What have you always wanted to code? Show it to Elon. See what he thinks. At worst, you'll get some feedback.

• 21:40Speaker 06

  There was also a discussion about identifying cool code.

• 21:43Casey Newton?

  What?

• 21:44Speaker 06

  I genuinely do not know what that means and I don't know who is the arbiter of cool in this situation.

• 21:48Casey Newton?

  Wait, tell us more. What is cool code?

• 21:51Speaker 06

  That's all I know. I don't know anything else. I think people are just grasping at straws to retain some semblance of order.

• 21:58Casey Newton?

  I want to read you a post that someone had sent me from Blind. Blind is this app where you sort of log in with your work email and then you can have these pseudonymous chats about what's happening at your company. And multiple people have sent me this post and I wonder if you've seen it. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but the headline is "I Can't Cope." And it reads, "I'm on the 24/7 team working to make all of Elon's ridiculous dreams come true. Management have repeatedly threatened to fire us if we miss delivery, even if it's totally outside our control. If we don't work at weekends, we're gone. If we take PTO or leave, we're gone. People are working ridiculous hours. I'm working around 20 hours per day at absolutely full velocity. I'm waking up in the night to attend status calls. Even when I'm not working, I can't stop worrying about it. I can't cope.

• 22:43Casey Newton?

  I'm an absolute mess. I'm at a breaking point. This is after just a few days of Elon." How closely does that track with what you are hearing and seeing from your colleagues?

• 22:53Speaker 06

  So there are two camps at Twitter right now. The people who are being completely ignored until they get fired and the people who are being pulled into these task forces. I think the better place is to be in the people who are being ignored and will be fired. My heart goes out to this person. I hope they are able to find gainful employment. And in that four hours, while they are trying to sleep and take care of themselves, applying to jobs. And I sincerely hope that there is care taken for people who are on visas. All of the people I know who are here on visas have no idea what will happen to them and they have not been told anything. So this is more than just privileged tech people crying because we're moving from one six-figure salary to another six-figure salary. These are people who are trying to immigrate to this country and have gainful employment and do a good job, who are highly skilled.

• 23:36Casey Newton?

  And what do you make of the characterization that has come from Elon and people around him that Twitter is this kind of bloated, overstaffed, slow-moving company where everything takes way too long to ship, where there's kind of a culture of, you know, sitting on your hands and not really doing much? And where, you know, with some quick decisive action, you could really trim some fat and re-establish the company and make it profitable?

• 24:08Speaker 06

  So there is a lot to that I do not necessarily disagree with. I think Twitter, at the end of the day, is structured very poorly. This goes back to a lack of operational leadership which has been existent in the company for many years. This company does not have good operations, and it shows. So I do not think, though, it is because engineers and people are sitting on their hands. I think it is because the way this company is structured, it is nearly impossible to get anything done, whether it is trying to get the appropriate approvals by going through Byzantine processes, literally not being told how things are changing from day to day. So there is some truth to that statement. This is the absolute wrong way to deal with it.

• 24:46Casey Newton?

  You know, on one level, working at Twitter is just a job, but I know from so many of the employees who I've spoken to who work there, there is a real sense of inspiration around the mission of a company that does want to democratize communication, give more people a voice. And I wonder, as you've been going through all this, if you have been thinking about the degree to which that could be at risk, and what fears you might have around the future of Twitter, the service?

• 25:18Speaker 06

  Any company, Twitter included, is a function of its people. And the people who have always been drawn to Twitter are kind of strange in the best way possible. It's not something you really know until you work at the company, and those people are all the ones who are going to leave. Those are not the people who are going to stay. So all of that is gone.

• 25:38Casey Newton?

  And what do you think will happen to Twitter, the product, in the next few months? Like, where do you see this heading?

• 25:46Speaker 06

  I would love to think that everybody on Twitter is going to leave in protest. But the reality of the situation is a lot of people may stay, but it's going to be interesting to see who stays. Twitter had already leaned more towards different communities from what made Twitter some very small percentage of people on Twitter generate all the tweets, right? So even pre-Lon, we're already starting from a place where it's actually a very fragile community, a very, very few people creating all of the content that everybody else sits and consumes. Now that community is being shifted and changed. Heavy tweeters have been leaving the platform, and it's not just people leaving the platform. The content that is popular on the platform is changing towards more niche communities. So there is part of this that was an unfortunate direction that Twitter, pre-Lon, was already headed in anyway.

• 26:31Speaker 06

  So we'll see. It'll be interesting to see who stays and who goes, but I think the heart of Twitter will be gone.

• 26:38Kevin Roose?

  So just to put a fine point on it, you're planning to be fired in the next couple of days, correct?

• 26:43Speaker 06

  That is my expectation, yes. And that is most of Twitter's expectation.

• 26:48Kevin Roose?

  And have you thought about how you'll feel if and when that happens?

• 26:52Speaker 06

  Scared and relieved. It will be scary to not have income. But at the same time, I hope that all of us who get fired will just get to chill out for a day or so and then wake up on, you know, a couple of days later and say, all right, got to get that resume out there. Got to be energized about these other jobs because right now it's sucking the life out of us.

• 27:11Kevin Roose?

  Yeah. Well, I'm really grateful for your time and willingness to chat with us about this. And I'm sorry you're going through this.

• 27:20Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 27:26Casey Newton?

  When we come back, a Twitter engineer on how long it would normally take to make the changes Elon Musk wants to see.

• 27:35Speaker 03

  Support for this podcast comes from Dell Technologies. It's time to put AI to work. Is your business ready? The challenge isn't getting started with AI. It's scaling beyond pilots while maintaining control of your data, governance, infrastructure and costs. Dell AI Factory provides the integrated foundation you need to scale AI securely and efficiently with one trusted partner. Dell, AI on your terms. From idea to impact. Learn more at dell.com/yourwaytoai. That's dell.com/yourwaytoai.

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• 28:42Speaker 04

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• 29:17Casey Newton?

  All right, what should we call you?

• 29:20Speaker 08

  Let's use Fulcrum.

• 29:21Casey Newton?

  Fulcrum, all right. Fulcrum, welcome to Hard Fork. Can you say how long you've worked at Twitter?

• 29:28Speaker 08

  Quite a few years.

• 29:30Casey Newton?

  And can you share anything about what kind of work you do at Twitter?

• 29:33Speaker 08

  I'm an engineer, software developer.

• 29:36Casey Newton?

  Okay, what has the past week been like for you?

• 29:40Speaker 08

  Intense and uninformed.

• 29:42Casey Newton?

  Let's maybe start with intensity. What has felt intense about these past few days?

• 29:48Speaker 08

  Uncertainty. There are people who aren't even certain if they should continue doing the work they're doing. And that pile of unknowns, along with the things that have been reported on, which is all the information we really have, it leads to this cognitive dissonance and just general constant stress.

• 30:02Casey Newton?

  What was the culture of this company like before Elon Musk showed up? Like, what has it generally been like to work at Twitter?

• 30:08Speaker 08

  Twitter has gone through phases in its lifetime, but at least leading up to this whole fiasco, I can't think of a better place to work. People were respectful, people were honest, and people had legitimate goals. I mean, even in the lowest parts of engineering, people would raise privacy concerns or potential misuse of new features. And like, their only job is to write random code that no one's ever going to see, just like the piping behind the scenes. And the company just always kind of had a culture of letting people speak to these things. And more often than not, it caught us on issues before it ever made it to the public like.

• 30:39Casey Newton?

  And how did news that Elon Musk was going to buy the company start to change the way it felt inside?

• 30:45Speaker 08

  That's complicated because no one really knew. I mean, I guess there was sort of group think that existed that was this guy was not a nice person. You know, there were a lot of people that were of the thought that this should probably have been banned a long time ago for his behavior. And everything just sort of came from there.

• 31:00Kevin Roose?

  And this idea that Elon Musk and his inner circle seem to have that Twitter is full of coddled, unproductive people who are, you know, left-wing political activists who just want to censor people on the right. What do you make of that impression that he and his friends seem to have of who works at Twitter and why?

• 31:24Speaker 08

  I mean, he's certainly been more aggressively attaching himself to various political viewpoints and their talking points, and if it serves him, he'll lean into it. I will say, having been there for a number of years, the company has grown in a lot of ways and some not so good. Like, I don't disagree with people when they say there's probably too many managers, too many engineers, maybe delivery is a little too slow. Management has never been the company's strong point. So that aside, you don't go through any change like this without some massive structural change. If he just came in and did the same thing, like, what's the point?

• 31:55Casey Newton?

  Yeah. Okay, so there's an idea there that Twitter should be moving faster than it has been. We've been hearing that Elon is saying, ship this thing by next Monday, or else you're going to be fired. As an engineer, when you hear that you have a three or four-day deadline, what does that do to you?

• 32:22Speaker 08

  I lose my mind. I mean, having a three-to-four-day deadline on something because priorities shifted, we need to have this done by Friday, that's normal. That's a little stressful. Might put in a couple extra hours, need to get it done. Makes sense, but I think the major differentiator here is just the sheer scale. I wouldn't get asked at work to completely revamp Twitter Blue by Friday. That's just completely absurd. And the sheer number of systems that need to be touched on, the number of engineers that have to be dragged in, that's like raising the Titanic from the bottom of the ocean.

• 32:50Casey Newton?

  Because it's not as if there's like, just like, a certain set of code that needs to be written. You also have to coordinate across presumably dozens of engineers, product managers, and lots of other folks, right?

• 33:01Speaker 08

  Yeah. Well, I mean, if you look at some of the feature sets that have been reported on that he wants to add in, like ranking Blue check users higher than others where that ranking occurs in the stack. Like, they have to completely reshift how that entire process works. There are whole services in the company that we have to go figure out.

• 33:17Kevin Roose?

  Right, and for people who aren't engineers and don't know, like, how long would these changes normally take at Twitter to implement?

• 33:26Casey Newton?

  Yeah, like, if somebody come to you and said, "We want to redo Twitter Blue", what would be like the timeframe that you'd be given that would make you say like, "Yeah, that seems like a reasonable amount of time to do that"?

• 33:35Speaker 08

  It depends. If the change requires a ton of infrastructure changes, it could take quite a while because the Twitter platform is generally pretty slow. Where we're more concerned with reliability than we are moving fast. But, feature-wise, I guess if I had to give a roundabout timeframe, there would probably be something that could possibly be deployed within a quarter to two quarters.

• 33:55Casey Newton?

  So, three to six months, and with the deadline this team has been given is Monday?

• 33:59Speaker 08

  Yeah, because you also have to keep in mind, like, these changes are pretty structural to the service. And not only is this an engineering problem, it's a social problem. Like, we need to do testing. We need to figure out how this can be abused. What are people going to do with it? You know, what are the Bitcoin bros going to do to try to steal more of people's money abusing this feature?

• 34:17Kevin Roose?

  Right, and that's what goes on with all major releases at a big social network, is trying to figure out, "We changed this feature. What are the 10 other things that happen"? And you're essentially saying, it sounds like that these deadlines are so short that this stuff may be released without any of that testing or scrutiny, that sort of trying to figure out what could go wrong. They're just gonna be set loose?

• 34:40Speaker 08

  Yeah. I mean, I've read the design docs that exist as of right now and the spaces for that information, and that work are empty.

• 34:47Kevin Roose?

  Wow.

• 34:47Casey Newton?

  Wait, they're just like blank spots in the like, "How could this be abused" section?

• 34:51Speaker 08

  Yeah. There's one section about like user privacy and like privacy data, and it's basically, "We're not doing anything with user data, so we don't worry about that." And then now, it's just a blue check on a profile.

• 35:02Kevin Roose?

  Wow. So, you said that there's been very little communication from managers and executives at Twitter in the past week. What has been communicated? What's happening?

• 35:15Speaker 08

  So, there's a couple of things, and it depends on sort of where you are in the leadership stack as far as like Musk and his people. Generally, the one like overarching message that did get communicated was, "Find something cool that you like and hopefully Musk likes it functionally."

• 35:27Casey Newton?

  So, it's like, it's become this kind of hackathon, show and tell project?

• 35:31Speaker 08

  Yeah. One of my coworkers put it as Hack Week, but with a gun to your head.

• 35:37Kevin Roose?

  That's dark.

• 35:38Speaker 08

  Think about it. If you present him an idea and he thinks it's cool, he wants it done like within a week. And you've basically just sacrificed every team around you.

• 35:46Kevin Roose?

  Wow. I'm curious what you make of the various product changes that have been floated or proposed by Elon Musk and his inner circle, such as the charging $8 a month for Twitter verification, bringing back Vine. What do you make of those proposals? And do you think they're good ideas?

• 36:10Speaker 08

  That's kind of the hard part. It kind of hurts my soul every time I agree with Musk. Like, there are certain things he's done that kind of made sense. I mean, one of the first decisions he made was to redirect the logged-out view to the Explore page. And I don't know this for certain, but my basic understanding of the goal here was that we might even be able to serve ads to people that aren't logged in.

• 36:29Casey Newton?

  And so, just real quick. So what that means is, before Musk, when you were not logged into Twitter, you just basically see a box asking you to log in. Now, if you go to Twitter and you're not logged in, they'll show you a bunch of tweets, which might entice you to sign in, to create an account. And if you linger and browse through some tweets, maybe you see some ads, right? So that was a relatively quick change that he made that I think a lot of people would agree makes some sense.

• 36:53Speaker 08

  Yeah, at the very least, it was worth trying.

• 36:56Casey Newton?

  And what about some of his other ideas?

• 36:58Speaker 08

  The Vine one, it's not the worst idea. I mean, the cynical part of me says, "Too little, too late." You know, TikTok is TikTok, and that's a mighty hill to climb. But sure, I mean, we do have all the original content from Vine. So, marketing-wise, the nostalgia factor is huge, which gives us kind of a foothold to at least launch something. I really find it completely, patently absurd to try to bring back Vine proper. Like, that code base is so ancient. Good luck. But we at least have the media. And, you know, trying to build a product like that, we've been working on that for a while. I think every tech company has at least tried. You know, is this something we can do? There's been mockups.

• 37:35Casey Newton?

  So even before Musk, you all were talking about bringing back some sort of short-form video something under the Vine brand?

• 37:41Speaker 08

  Yeah. I mean, video has been on the radar and sort of talked about for years.

• 37:46Kevin Roose?

  When they inevitably make, you know, the movie about what's happening at Twitter now.

• 37:52Casey Newton?

  Who do you want to play you? Who do you have to play you? But also, like, what are some of the the big scenes from the last week?

• 37:59Speaker 08

  It'd probably be the most boring. Like, you could probably make a really interesting, ethereal horror movie out of, just like constantly walking around with nothing. You know, one of those films that has no audio, no, no dialogue.

• 38:11Casey Newton?

  You mean because everyone's working from home? Or because it's quiet? Or what's, what do you mean?

• 38:15Speaker 08

  There's no communications. So the only people talking are like people in a corner. But it's not like, oh, the whole company went to an all hands and learned what's happening. It's everybody asking, are we ever going to see him? Should I keep doing my work? Do they even serve lunch anymore?

• 38:30Casey Newton?

  So as, as we're recording this, we don't know what might happen to your job. As you think about it, do you want to be working at Twitter in three months? Or do you feel like you're ready to be somewhere else?

• 38:44Speaker 08

  I won't be staying at Twitter in the long term.

• 38:46Casey Newton?

  Why not?

• 38:48Speaker 08

  Culture is real. I mean, culture seeps through the product. You know, for all of Twitter's faults, a lot of the way the company behaved was because people cared so much, and that can be infuriating in its own ways. I mean, people have seen this. So now we're moving into the phase equivalent to move fast and break things with no care for the people who are using it, which just sort of defeats the point.

• 39:07Casey Newton?

  I mean, what are, what are your friends and family sort of like texting you? What, what, what kinds of, what kinds of messages are you getting?

• 39:16Speaker 08

  My dad basically messages me every morning and says, has it happened yet?

• 39:20Casey Newton?

  Oh, God. Meaning, have you been fired?

• 39:22Speaker 08

  Yeah, because he's reading the news about like the work hours and stuff. And he's been wildly speculating about what kind of labor law lawsuits are going to come out about the hours and so on. But more with regards to me, he's like, has it happened yet? And that's really it. You know, no one knows anything. And I know as much as my family, because we're all reading the same updates.

• 39:42Casey Newton?

  Yeah. Okay. All right. Fulcrum, thank you for coming on Hard Fork and.

• 39:47Speaker 08

  No problem.

• 39:47Casey Newton?

  You know, keep us posted.

• 39:49Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 39:50Casey Newton?

  Yeah, good luck out there.

• 39:51Speaker 08

  Thanks so much.

• 39:54Casey Newton?

  All right, we'll be right back.

• 40:10Speaker 03

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• 41:53Kevin Roose?

  Before we go, we should say we did reach out to Twitter and ask them to respond to what you just heard from employees about what's been going on inside the company. They didn't write back. The company has also said nothing publicly since the deal closed. So the closest we can get to understanding their point of view is probably from Musk's Twitter feed, where he's been tweeting things like, "Twitter's current lords and peasants system for who has or doesn't have a blue checkmark is bullshit." And to all complainers, please continue complaining, but it will cost $8. He also recently changed his bio to Twitter complaint hotline

• 42:34Kevin Roose?

  operator and his location to hell. Casey, thank you for entering the Twitter bunker with me yet again. And thank you for all the hard work and reporting you've been doing.

• 42:48Casey Newton?

  It's been my pleasure and looking forward to what the next week brings.

• 42:54Kevin Roose?

  And if people want to send you any huge scoops about what's happening at Twitter, you can send those right over to Casey. His email address is kevin.rousse at nytimes.com.

• 43:04Casey Newton?

  You can't, people still can't tell our voices apart. I hear this every week.

• 43:08Kevin Roose?

  But seriously, if you want to email both of us about something, the show's email is [email protected].

• 43:16Casey Newton?

  But if it's a scoop, you're going to want to send that as a DM to at Casey Newton on Twitter.

• 43:20Kevin Roose?

  Do not do that. Send it to, send it directly to me, [email protected]. I've heard that this Casey Newton fellow is an impersonator, a scammer.

• 43:30Casey Newton?

  Hey, I pay my eight bucks a month, Rus.

• 43:32Kevin Roose?

  And he's probably going to steal your cryptocurrency.

• 43:34Casey Newton?

  How dare you. All right, let's see the credits.

• 43:40Kevin Roose?

  Hard Fork is produced by Davis Land. We're edited by Paula Schuman. This episode was fact checked by Caitlin Love. The show was engineered today by Corey Shreppel. Original music by Dan Powell, Alicia Butt Ytup, and Marian Lozano. With special thanks to Hannah Ingber, Nell Galogly, Kate LaPreste, Shannon Busta, Mahima Shalani, and Jeffrey Miranda. That's all this week. See you next time.

• 44:05Casey Newton?

  Wow, you're sticking with the AI-generated prompt on the episode.

• 44:08Kevin Roose?

  You know what? Could an AI do this?

• 44:11Casey Newton?

  Kevin just flipped me off.

• 44:14Kevin Roose?

  Thank you for the visual.

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