The billionaire and new boss of Twitter has just ended remote work at the social network.
It’s been barely two weeks since Elon Musk took over Twitter (TWTR) – Get Free Report.
But already, the billionaire is moving fast to generate revenue and make the platform profitable.
The stakes are enormous for the tech tycoon, who acquired Twitter for a whopping $44 billion. He borrowed about $13 billion from the banks and was forced to sell Tesla (TSLA) – Get Free Report stock of nearly $20 billion to fund the deal.
He started by revamping Twitter Blue, the subscription service, now integrating the blue account verification badge. The new Blue now costs $7.99. Musk hopes to increase the subscription share of Twitter’s revenue to 50%. In the second quarter, subscriptions represented only 9% of revenue.
The billionaire has also drastically reduced costs, by eliminating 3,500 jobs, or half of the firm’s workforce, in one day.
He continued to adopt this tone of urgency in his first email to employees on November 9. He told them that there was “no way to sugarcoat the message” about the health of the economy and its impact on advertising, which represents 91% of Twitter revenue, according to Bloomberg News.
‘Arduous’
“The road ahead is arduous and will require intense work to succeed,” the billionaire wrote.
“Over the next few days, the absolute top priority is finding and suspending any verified bots/trolls/spam,” he added in a separate message.
Musk also said that he wanted subscriptions to account for half of all of Twitter’s revenue.
Faced with the challenges, Musk announced to employees that he was ending remote work due to “difficult times ahead.” He expects employees to work from the office 40 hours a week, and any exceptions would need to be approved by him.
The billionaire thus put an end to the practice, adopted by his predecessors after two years of the covid-19 pandemic, according to which employees could work from anywhere.
“The past few months have proven we can make that work. So if our employees are in a role and situation that enables them to work from home and they want to continue to do so forever, we will make that happen,” Twitter said in May 2020.
Musk and Remote Work
But Musk has never made it a secret that he is against remote work.
“All the covid stay-at-home stuff has tricked people into thinking that you don’t actually need to work hard. Rude awakening inbound!” he posted on Twitter on May 26.
Last June, he ordered employees of Tesla, the maker of electric vehicles, to return to the office.
“Everyone at Tesla is required to spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week,” he wrote in one of his emails. “If you don’t show up, we will assume you have resigned,” the serial entrepreneur wrote in an email to employees.
At the time, he explained that in-person collaboration was critical to Tesla’s success.
“There are of course companies that don’t require this, but when was the last time they shipped a great new product? It’s been a while,” he said in an email, one of two that were leaked and shared on social media.
“Tesla has and will create and actually manufacture the most exciting and meaningful products of any company on Earth. This will not happen by phoning it in.”
