March 29, 2024

In Twitter Meeting, Elon Musk Fields Questions From 8,000 Employees

Even with such a performance, some cautioned that Mr. Musk might still change his mind about completing the deal for Twitter.

“I assume he’s operating on two tracks,” said Ann Lipton, a professor of corporate governance at Tulane Law School. “Maybe he wants to lower the price or even cancel the deal. If the deal goes through, he wants additional investors.”

She added: “Publicly talking to Twitter employees, trying to assuage their concerns, maybe gives reassurances to potential investors. But I’m not clear whether that’s his Plan B or his Plan A.”

Twitter declined to comment on the meeting, and Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Musk had been scheduled to speak to Twitter’s employees weeks ago, but the session did not take place. Then over the past week, the San Francisco-based company began collecting questions for him from employees on its internal Slack messaging system. The meeting, scheduled to start at 9 a.m. San Francisco time, began a few minutes late, with Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s chief executive, thanking Mr. Musk.

Then Mr. Musk started answering questions, including about remote work. This month, he sent memos to workers at Tesla and SpaceX saying he expected them to be in the office for 40 hours a week. Twitter’s employees have largely worked remotely in the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr. Musk told Twitter employees that he was open to their working remotely, given that developing software is different from showing up daily to build cars. But he said a broad lack of in-office participation could contribute to a dwindling “esprit de corps” and hoped that people would be willing to go into the office more in the future.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/16/technology/elon-musk-twitter-employees-meeting.html

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