Working from home is banned - if you don't show up, you're fired.

Also, all offices are closed.

... touch luck.

This was my reaction as well.

Maybe they are trying to gently get people accustomed to the idea that Twitters offices will be closed permanently, and not in the good* WFH way.

*ymmv

Well there are unlikely to be many people left who need access to Twitter's office. By my calculation the staff count could have dropped to less than 1,000 employees. I guess that includes vital people such as the cleaners and Musk's personal boot lickers.

By my calculation, it just has.

More genius from Space Karen. What will he dream up next?

Damn! You beat me to [1]it !

Have one!

[1] https://www.instagram.com/reel/ClF5UZZt4L1/?igshid=MDJmNzVkMjY=

It is sad.

I do have some baseline sympaty for Mr. Musk. SpaceX is an amazing achievement, which I suspect will be important to the future of mankind.

When I had to choose a career, space was not an option because nothing was happening. I ended up in aero in stead. If I were in the same position now, I might have gone SpaceX, knowing fully well about the working conditions and expecting assholery from the top (sadly many that achieve a lot have asshole tendencies, there may be more than coirrelation at play).

However, there is the whole pedo-guy thing.. and the tweets.. and the acceptance of trumpism...

Sometimes I suspect an uncontrolled self-destructive bipolar condition. I almost pity him

And then there is the possibility that Twitter disappears, never to return. Which in itself would be a boon for mankind...

Just a pity that there will not be enough cash left to do a repeat on faecebook / meta.....

It is difficult. If he is simply a horrible man-child, then I can chuckle in glee.. If it is medical, then I hope that he will start taking his meds again.

..and hope that SpaceX survives.

Sorry, but I don't see it.

Musk is a man-child, a brat who needs to grow up and learn to respect people rather than ordering everyone on planet Earth do what he says or thinks. SpaceX, technically sure is an achievement but that's in spite of Musk and that's as usual the hard work of the tech teams, still just another "billionaire space penis joy ride".

The quicker everyone finally sees Musk for what he really is the quicker he can bugger off to obscurity and get on play with his £80k a pop toy gokart company and his space penis joy rider.

That is where I beg to differ.

SpaceX can not be compared to blue origin or virgin.

And SpaceX is only where it is because Elon bet EVERYTHING on getting into orbit, and then doubled down and bet everything on reuseability, and then doubled down and bet on stainless steel spaceships.. and on starlink and and and.....

Starting out with trying to buy a used ICBM and ending up with SpaceX is not something that happened despite of Elon. It happened because of him.. for which I am prepared to accept but not overlook SOME assholery.

So sit in the car park and use the WiFi.

I've been on plenty on/in online commumities that went south before - Slashdot and Full Disclosure, UMSF,.. but they all withered slowly on the vine, rather than going out with a bang. Today's mass goodbyes, REM filks, Toy Story 3 memes and the like is making me genuinely sad. Truly, you don't jnow what you've got until a gimp aquires it. (Register: please, never ever do that to us. You're the last place standing from the 90s.)

Register has already done it.

Yes, it's been an insidious, and weird transformation. I miss the old Reg, I fear my days of reading columns here may be dwindling. Maybe it's fitting? I've recently left full time IT...

Yup, same feeling here, El Reg has been transforming for quite some time now but not in a good way, it's completely losing its objectivity. There were always heavy points of view, but they were on both sides of the arguements/opinions/ point of view. Now it seems as though it has become another echo chamber for the Californian state of mind, and that in my opinion, is as highly negative state of mind.

I'm glad Elon Musk is making a fool of ex Twitterati, it's time that the tables turned and people became adults again.

I pretty much agree, but - semantic distinction - I would've said it's losing the opinionated subjectivity that used to be its hallmark.

Yes, it's surprisingly fast. I remember the 'Summer of Facebook' in 2007 when everyone seemed to move from MySpace to Facebook (at least here in London) but that took probably about two to three months. The Twitter meltdown achieved the same thing in weeks.

Mastodon [1]hit a new record for sign-ups per hour this morning and I notice it myself too. I left Twitter for Mastodon at the start of this year but in just two weeks it seems everyone I knew on Twitter has now done the same. A friend of mine is a bit of a media personality as a result of his work as a lawyer and he has tens of thousands of followers on Twitter (no, it's not the Secret Barrister, [2]they're already there ). I am helping migrate his stuff off Twitter to Mastodon as we speak.

I struggle to find a comparable event where an online entity went down this fast (offline we've seen things go fast, from Lehman Brothers to Enron) but online communities seem to go under slowly. I [3]read a great thread about the 'Trust Thermocline' and how big names can innovate or evolve with consent but go one step to far and suddenly lose all trust in a very short time. We're sort of speed reading that process with Twitter at the moment.

[1] https://bitcoinhackers.org/@mastodonusercount/109363043328835670

[2] https://mastodonapp.uk/@BarristerSecret

[3] https://mastodon.social/@garius/109279394369832433

> I struggle to find a comparable event where an online entity went down this fast (offline we've seen things go fast, from Lehman Brothers to Enron) but online communities seem to go under slowly.

Freenode springs to mind

"A friend of mine is a bit of a media personality as a result of his work as a lawyer and he has tens of thousands of followers"

Lockpicking lawyer?

https://youtu.be/TRozAbaKs9M

( I assume he has a twitter channel as well)

My first thoughts were Popehat or Legal Eagle.

But not too much as this looks like it is going to be the quickest burn of $44b ever!

For the rich it is monopoly money. They don't care the Burn. They love the flames.

I feel like I bought too much popcorn and this shitshow could be over by the end of the month. Probably the fastest bonfire of $44bn in history. The way Twitter is haemorrhaging staff, I honestly can't see how it can continue to exist for much longer.

All it will take is one more inappropriate e-mail/tweat from Musk and everyone left will walk.

In 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ...

Yep, and the $44B is not all his either. He paid about half and that would have been his Tesla monopoly money, $22B. About $17B was in high interest loans which is costing Twitter $1B per year compared to $50M per year before Elon took over.

The rest was investors, so $5B, which may or may not have been monopoly, but it is now.

Twitter made about $600M per year after costs, and had about $6B cash reserves, so half of that is Elons now. Theres probably another $6B or so in other assets.

So he will have swapped $22B Tesla for $6B real money.

...So he will have swapped $22B Tesla for $6B real money...

Given the Tesla stock is ridiculously overvalued* that actually might work out an advantage when the inevitable Tesla stock collapse happens.

* Tesla is not really worth more than the next 8 car makers combined but it's stock is.

Elon might care when he remembers where he got some of the money and what they do to people who piss them off.

He should probably avoid the World Cup and all embassies for a few years.

Yup... Whilst I don't hate or love Musk the way some people seem to. (Rich person can be an arsehole isn't that new). It'll be strange if his undoing is simply not realising that people who work for a startup, especially in emerging industries like SpaceX and Tesla were, are a different kind of people who work for a random tech company.

Twitter may be prominent, but the product isn't exactly (technically) groundbreaking (apart from maybe some scaling issues), people in companies like that, i.e. most companies, don't come to work for the sheer love of doing their jobs, they come to work to earn cash to spend time with their friends and family. A concept that's often lost on the worlds richest, that's one of the ways they get where they do.

Just hope it doesn't take SpaceX with it, I'd really like to see that big 'ol rocket they're building fly....

Does he have any friends to spend time with? Not asking for a friend...

"Does he have any friends to spend time with? Not asking for a friend..."

If he is quick .... he can buy some ...... or build some of his androids 'real quick' !!!

:)

"they come to work to earn cash to spend time with their friends and family. A concept that's often lost on the worlds richest..."

They have ALWAYS missed this, from the dawn of the Industrial Age. That's because the world's richest greatly benefit from the heavy workloads imposed [on others]...while the workers who actually do the heavy loads only subsist.

This has been the pattern of labor for the past 150+ years. Some people may not like to admit that, saying that even speaking of such is "socialist", but to believe otherwise is both hard denialism and ignorance. Books have been written, documentaries created, biographies of the workers penned...even photos taken. Of workers suffering while the bosses prosper from the suffering.

So bosses will never connect with base-level workers. It hurts their pocketbooks, and World Domination egos, to do so.

Books have been written, documentaries created, biographies of the workers penned...even photos taken.

So it must be true then?

"Books have been written, documentaries created, biographies of the workers penned...even photos taken.

So it must be true then?"

Quite possibly truer than making up 'Facts' [ A la 'Trump' & co] ...... unless someone has been very busy creating all the 'False' evidence. !!!

:)

>Twitter may be prominent, but the product isn't exactly (technically) groundbreaking...

This is a complete misreading of what Twitter does and how it is perceived by the market. It's a top-tier tech firm that has salaries and projects to match, with a unique position as the global aggregator for news and social shouting for the anglosphere and most of the western world. This isn't some regional widget maker full of lifers clocking on for 10h a day.

This isn't a startup vs established player thing either. This is a matter of people deciding they don't want to work for a fucking buffoon with no idea what he's doing at the company and absolutely no manners, human decency or, apparently, a soul. They're being asked to commit to a company with no idea what their compensation plan would look like, or what they'd even be doing. Just unserious.

Remember he doesn't actually run SpaceX. Gwynne Shotwell does. Before she came on board the place was a fucking disaster factory. He doesn't actually run Tesla either, with a whole grab-bag of actual functioning adults running the show. The man has no place running companies and anyone with half an ounce of employability will find their lives more peaceful and enriching elsewhere.

Nah, Liz Truss was far better

Took Quasi Kwarteng about half an hour to create a £50e9 hole in our economy

However, many still have access to their systems.

Maybe the ones responsible for locking people out were fired earlier or do not which to become "extreme" employees and are now implicitly fired.

According to rumour, Elon was terrified that disgruntled employees would sabotage the company. I think he deliberately locked everyone out but did not expect that everyone able to let people back in would be leaving. It also looks like the people who would disable computer access to the leavers also left so the leavers still have access to their company accounts.

Normally I would say sabotaging an employer on your way out is a really stupid career ending move. This time Elon's paranoia could be partially justified. I expect that many of the skilled purge survivors are in the US on H-1B visas. In theory they can leave work and if they get another job and get the proper paperwork sorted within three months they can stay. The waiting list on getting the forms reviewed is currently over three months. Any H-1B leaving or fired from Twitter is going back to a country they worked really hard to leave. The cost of staying could involve signing documents that say Twitter conforming to court orders and obeying the law - which may now be impossible for Twitter to do with the remaining staff even if Elon wasn't "helping". The consequences of signing defective compliance documents could easily involve a prison sentence but the US government might cheap out by simply cancelling the visa. Given that Twitter H-1Bs' careers are effectively over no matter what and that they will be leaving the country anyway the cost of sabotage just plummeted. Some of them may even be skilled enough to do something more rapidly destructive than Elon is already doing. In their place I would not bother: it would be funnier for Twitter to die entirely from Musk's mismanagement than to give him any outside excuse for the failure.

Never burn your bridges...

Life has a nasty habit of kicking you in the "cods" and that boss you didn't along with very well maybe the only lifeline you have to ensure your family isn't sleeping in cardboard city by the end of the month. HR exit interview, "I did my best, had fun and no other comments to make. So long and thanks for all the fish.".

With several new episodes every day!

That icon ----> , because the popcorn one isn't available yet.

== Bring us Dabbsy back! ==

"One laid-off staffer was in charge of managing the system which controls badge access to Twitter's buildings. He was called back in to help regain access to HQ by those who had locked themselves out."

I just made that point as a JOKE in another thread. I didn't realise it had happened for real.

If they can lock themselves out the building, there's nothing that can't go wrong. Nothing. What was it somebody said about their domain registration...?

I am pretty sure that was a parody account and senior Twit jumped in on it, but the the reg author is sharing it as news

Absolutely correct. It was a joke. There's a better-than-evens chance Elon's response was made with tongue similarly firmly planted in cheek.

Hey, I thought he had his tongue firmly in his cheek when he said he'd buy Twitter...

But, at this point, if the guy who manages the doors is still there, they're one of the few employees left. They've got a busy day today.

only opening the door for people who leave... I have doubts about any arriving these days.

Presumably that tongue belongs to someone hardcore! Or did you mean face cheek?

The world is being far too hard on our man, the inimitable Mr. Musk.

After all, how many people in the world can take a $44 BILLION ego purchase and erase billions of that value in a mere 2 weeks??

That takes SKILL .

In a now deleted tweet, Musk wrote, paraphrased:

How do you make a little money (in tech)

Start with a lot of money

Sure I remember Branson saying 'The fastest way to become a millionaire is to start as a billionaire and buy an airline'.

Ahh.. Gotta pity the obsenely rich and their problems, eh?

how many people in the world can take a $44 BILLION ego purchase and erase billions of that value in a mere 2 weeks?

I saw a calculation this morning saying that if Twitter crashes and burns after a month of Musk he will have burnt $1 million a minute for the entire month. That makes The KLF look like slackers.

It might even outpace Liz Truss and her destruction of value.