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☆ Some Twitter workers are calling Elon Musk's advisers 'Elon's goons,' a report says
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-01 | by ( Grace Dean | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Elon Musk has been outlining plans to overhaul Twitter, assisted by his inner circle. Some Twitter workers have been calling his advisers "Elon's goons," the New York Times reported. Musk's plans include overhauling Twitter's verification process and potentially rebooting Vine. Current and former Twitter workers have been sending each other private messages in the midst of mounting uncertainty at the company, with some staff calling Musk's advisors "Elon's goons," The New York Times reported. Many Twitter staff are concerned about their job security and are scrambling to complete tasks assigned by Musk's team so they can keep hold of their jobs.

☆ After Elon Musk’s wild weekend on Twitter, will advertisers stick with it?
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-01 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

“I think advertisers are bracing to leave,” said Claire Atkin, co-founder of the adtech watchdog Check My Ads. Most marketers bristle at the thought of having their ads run alongside toxic content such as hate speech, pornography or misinformation. Also on Monday, Angelo Carusone, CEO of media watchdog Media Matters for America, tweeted calling on major Twitter advertisers “to be putting pressure on Twitter right now” to better address the increase in hate and other toxic content. “I think advertisers are going to look at this and say, is the weak Twitter advertising product becoming a better or worse investment? After GM announced its Twitter advertising pause, some users on the platform, including some right-leaning political figures, have called for a boycott of the automaker.

Twitter’s new “Chief Twit” spent the weekend tweeting — and it’s still not much clearer what Elon Musk will do with his new company. He denied a report from The New York Times that he planned to make major layoffs Monday ahead of a date when many Twitter employees receive stock grants. Musk has surrounded himself with Silicon Valley veterans, some of whom have criticized Twitter’s moderation work. Later, he appeared to poke fun at his deleted tweet while also taking a swipe at The New York Times. “This is fake — I did *not* tweet out a link to The New York Times!” Musk wrote alongside a screenshot of the Times’ coverage of his deleted tweet.

☆ Elon Musk has pulled more than 50 Tesla employees into his Twitter takeover
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-31 | by ( Lora Kolodny | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty ImagesNew Twitter owner Elon Musk has pulled more than 50 of his trusted Tesla employees, mostly software engineers from the Autopilot team, into his Twitter takeover, CNBC has learned. At Twitter, Musk is counting on his lieutenants and loyalists to decide who and what to cut or keep at the social network. It is not immediately clear how Tesla employees are expected to split their schedules between the automaker and Twitter. Typically, when Tesla employees work for other Elon Musk ventures, usually SpaceX or the Boring Company, they can get paid by the other venture as a consultant. Employees say Musk wants that work done by the first week of November.

☆ Twitter's Hunger Games: Elon Musk oversees a weekend of coding sprints, stack ranking, and boot-licking as some employees fight to keep their jobs.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-30 | by ( Kali Hays | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Several Musk allies have been added to a company directory, with Musk being named CEO internally. Elon Musk put Twitter employees to the test this weekend to see who is capable, and willing, of surviving under his new reign. Musk has a 16 year old son, Saxon James Musk, whom he frequently mentions on Twitter, although the Twitter workers have yet to see any confirmation that James Musk is of any relation to their new owner. "This is it," one of the people familiar said, describing the feeling at the company under Musk. Many engineers were tasked over the weekend with "sprints," set periods of time for coding work to be done.

☆ Meta and Google are snapping up Twitter employees as Elon Musk plays a game of will-he-won't-he with the company
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-25 | by ( Grace Kay | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Over 500 employees have left Twitter in the past 90 days amid the company's court battle with Elon Musk. Over the past 90 days about 530 workers have left Twitter — about 60% more than had left Twitter during the previous quarter. And nearly 50 more have left the company just this month as the odds of Musk buying the company look increasingly higher. But, Twitter employees have been exiting the company on their own for months. Twitter employees might not be far off in their assessment.

☆ Baristas in San Francisco went on strike. Their robot co-workers went right on serving
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-18 | by ( Adam Rogers | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

For three days last month, 1,000 food-service workers at SFO went on strike over wages and working conditions. For decades, robots have been replacing, or at least nudging aside, human labor. But at SFO, robot baristas didn't simply replace humans — they crossed a picket line. Cafe X robot baristas stayed on the job when food-service workers went on strike at San Francisco International Airport last month. The short version is: Every new robot per thousand human workers reduces employment by 0.2 percentage points and decreases wages by 0.42%.

☆ Silicon Valley's not-so-secret thing for turning everyone into millionaires is angel investing. Here's how they do it.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-11 | by ( Darius Rafieyan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

Once only for the superrich, angel investing is now open to anyone with a few thousand dollars. With an estimated 360,000 active angel investors, it's become a favorite pastime in Silicon Valley. "It felt like gambling," David Spreng, a veteran venture-debt investor who's been angel investing as a side hustle for more than a decade, said. He wrote his first angel check shortly thereafter, a $1,000 investment in an electric-aircraft maker. The currency of Silicon Valley"Your currency, for lack of a better term, in Silicon Valley is you either started a company or you angel invest, right?"

☆ I binge-listened to tech podcasts for a week, and what I learned about Silicon Valley is kind of scary
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-04 | by ( Adam Rogers | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +19 min

2: The hosts don't know what they don't knowThe problem is, VC podcasts don't stick to the core issues of venture capital. 3: The hosts want us to believe what they don't knowThere's a shocking amount of this kind of drivel on the tech podcasts. This is what a good tech podcast should do: Use access to the best and most successful investors and innovators to illuminate the way Silicon Valley works. But that's not what matters in the world of tech podcasts. But after 40 hours of listening to tech podcasts, I feel kind of bad about it.

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