Elon Musk took control of Twitter in late October.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
A former Twitter exec told i News that Elon Musk was behaving “like the local drunk.”
Bruce Daisley said that meant employees would no longer be as proud to work at Twitter.
Musk has fired thousands and accused one of using his disability as an “excuse” to do “no actual work.”
Elon Musk, who recently publicly lashed out at a former worker, is behaving “like the local drunk,” an ex-Twitter vice-president told i News.
Bruce Daisley, who was Twitter’s vice-president for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa until January 2020, criticized Musk’s leadership of the company in an interview with the outlet. He referred to Musk’s clash with Haraldur Thorleifsson, a former Twitter director whom the tech mogul accused of using his disability as an “excuse” to do “no actual work.”
“The more Musk behaves like the local drunk – getting into slanging matches with disabled ex-employees – the less current employees will be proud to say they work there,” Daisley told i News. Musk has since apologized for his comments towards Thorleifsson, who has muscular dystrophy.
Daisley also referred to the chaos caused by the company’s much-reduced workforce. Just a week after taking control of Twitter, Musk laid off around half of its workers. Since then, more have been fired, been laid off, or quit, and the site has suffered from a number of outages which some critics have attributed in part to the reduced headcount.
“It’s a little bit like the character in the cartoon who runs off the cliff but doesn’t fall straight away,” Daisley told i News. “Initially a lot of commentators were willing to say that the Twitter business was full of slackers, Elon had fired 75% of the employees, and it was still running. Well now Wile E. Coyote has looked down and realised gravity does apply to him, too.”
Musk said this week’s outage, which affected images and external links, was caused by a “small API change” that had “massive ramifications.”
Twitter did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment on whether jobs cuts may have contributed to the outages.
Criticism of Musk’s leadership and treatment of staff has mounted. He’s argued publicly with workers who disagreed with him, told staff they needed to work “extremely hardcore” or be laid off, and set up beds in Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters for staff to sleep in as they work long hours, in some cases through the night.
Musk has also called in engineers and execs from his other companies to work at Twitter, given workers strict deadlines, and taken drastic measures to cut costs and boost revenues.
Under Musk, Twitter has become “a pressure cooker,” an employee who still works at the company and who spoke on the condition of anonymity told i News.
“There are no guidelines,” the worker continued. “There’s no respect. There’s absolutely zero transparency. It’s awful.”