Read all about Elon Musk first Twitter employees meeting - I work on Twitter: why I found Elon Musk inspiring in his first meeting with employees.
On Thursday morning, after arriving about 10 minutes late, Elon Musk addressed the entire company to talk about his intentions regarding Twitter.
He often went beyond what the questions posed to him required. But surprisingly, despite all the media attention on the subject, he only briefly talked about bots on the platform.
He also hinted that it is a fact that he is going to buy Twitter.
At one point, after talking about what "we" were going to do as a company, he stopped and said something like: "I shouldn't say we because the transaction hasn't been completed."
Elon Musk first Twitter employees meeting
But he was just being the classic engineer who tries to be precise with his language.
Some of my colleagues were surprised by some of the things Musk said, but he is a boss who understands the product.
These are my main takeaways from Thursday's meeting:
Musk said he wanted to have at least one billion people on Twitter, if not more. (Twitter currently has about 330 million users worldwide.)
He also raised the idea of integrating a payment system into the platform. If you want, payments could be another way to verify the identity of users.
He reiterated that bots have a negative effect on the user experience. He added that they could not be completely eradicated, but that the cost of having a bot could become more expensive.
Elon Musk first Twitter employees meeting statement
"For example, I think we could improve bot detection or ask everyone to associate a phone number with their account, which would make it more difficult to create bots on the platform. All this could increase the cost of producing bots on the platform."
Musk also told employees that even if Twitter returned to being an unlisted company upon its withdrawal from the stock exchange, it would still issue stock options for the company's workers with the possibility of liquidating them every 6 months. This is better than people expected, and it makes sense.
Musk was quite direct when he addressed the issues related to freedom of expression. Although he said he believed there should be freedom of expression on the platform, he commented that this did not necessarily mean that users had the right to say anything.
He added that if we were operating in countries that had different rules on freedom of expression, we would have to comply with them or leave the country.
This seems obvious to me. Every other platform, from Facebook to Google, would say the same thing.
Elon Musk first Twitter employees meeting questions
The question was formulated like this: "Tesla is forcing employees to come in person to work, what will happen here with this? “Basically, he answered: "To build a car, you need to work in person. There is no need to do it to carry out a software or design work."
He also told employees that if they needed to work remotely, they would have to be exceptional to get that exception.
He did not clarify what he meant by that. He added that the company will take into better consideration those who go to the office because doing so encourages productivity.
Personally, I am fine with that, and I do not mind going back to the office. Although my team works remotely, I try to make the operation as similar as possible to a face-to-face space through tools like Slack, which are used to talk to people in real time.
Although more employees are returning to the office, it is not something usual. People are surprised by this kind of comments. And that also makes sense. Many do not live in San Francisco or near a Twitter office.
What requires further reflection is what we are going to do with the people who joined the company already as remote workers. Some of the people I have talked to are trying to relocate to cities that have Twitter offices.
Elon Musk first Twitter employees meeting revealed
Musk is a boss who knows the product. There are many employees who do not. If we limit ourselves to the strictly humorous question of Twitter, Musk really understands the social network.
There was a period when I kept talking about aliens. People were like, "Why are you talking about aliens? Is he crazy? “Right away, he replied, "I have to stop trolling." It is his way of playing. Jack Dorsey does it that way too.
For now, I am not worried that his bad reputation on Twitter will affect the company. If he were to take Twitter public again, I would be worried, but now this bad reputation is even benefiting him.
He asked us to think about how we want to impact the world: what things can be done to lengthen human civilization, like going into space or fixing green energy. Ensuring the existence of a public square for debate and exchange of views is up to these challenges.
Although things had already calmed down since our CEO, Parag Agrawal, told us that Musk was going to buy Twitter, it seems that some of my colleagues are experiencing the "Musk rejection syndrome". The opposite is the "Musk-fanboy" syndrome.
The meeting motivated me and offered me a good guide to do something good while I am on Twitter.
# Elon Musk first Twitter employees meeting #
