“We are saying that Twitter is what’s taking place and what individuals are speaking about at this time. Steadily, we [at] Twitter are what’s taking place and what individuals are speaking about. That has undoubtedly been the case this week,” Agrawal wrote in a companywide e-mail Thursday, inviting team of workers to the AMA. “Following our board announcement, a lot of you could have had various kinds of questions about Elon Musk, and I need to welcome you to invite the ones questions to him.”
The town halls the place workers can ask direct, pointed questions of senior management are a long-standing Silicon Valley custom and happen frequently at Fb, Google and Twitter. However internet hosting a board member at one is uncommon.
Twitter spokesperson Brenden Lee showed the AMA and declined to remark additional. Musk didn’t straight away reply to a request for remark.
“Taking a look ahead to operating with Parag & Twitter board to make vital enhancements to Twitter in coming months,” Musk tweeted Tuesday, in a respond to a public welcome from Agrawal.
Hours previous, Musk had polled his 80 million Twitter fans on whether or not they’d like to peer an edit button — which might let them edit tweets after posting them — a winking nod to a long-standing function request from the platform’s energy customers. The corporate showed later that the button was once already within the works.
The elevation of Musk — who’s CEO of Tesla and SpaceX — to the Twitter board after he quietly purchased up greater than 9 % of the corporate will propel Twitter even additional into the political and cultural wars taking part in out everywhere the U.S.
Twitter, which is based totally in liberal San Francisco and has over 5,000 workers who can paintings remotely from any place, is understood for a particularly liberal and vocal company tradition. Not too long ago departed CEO Jack Dorsey is a outstanding supporter of Black Lives Subject. Twitter was once the primary corporate to do so towards President Donald Trump for his tweets supporting Capitol rioters on Jan. 6, in addition to the primary corporate to permit workers to completely earn a living from home. Engineering groups have spent years construction gear to battle junk mail, incorrect information and hate speech.
Musk, however, has used his personal broadly adopted Twitter account to query the desire for content material moderation, advertise himself as a champion of unfastened speech, and — as a number of workers famous this week in interior messages — seem to mock gender pronouns. He has additionally been referred to as a harsh supervisor who will search to fireplace other people at the spot when they aren’t on board along with his mind-set.
“Fast query: If an worker tweeted one of the crucial issues Elon tweets, they’d most likely be the topic” of an HR investigation, one worker famous on corporate Slack channels. “Are board participants held to the similar same old?”
Some other publish stated that workers have been suffering with welcoming a pace-setter whose values appeared to be in contradiction with the corporate’s.
“We all know that he has led to hurt to employees, the trans group, ladies, and others with much less energy on the earth,” that worker requested. “How are we going to reconcile this resolution with our values? Does innovation trump humanity?”
Some other worker who stated he used to paintings at Tesla stated he “witnessed the grim adjustments in corporate tradition that adopted” after Musk took over as CEO. “I’m extraordinarily unnerved at this time, as a result of I’ve observed what he can do firsthand,” the individual stated.
All week, senior Twitter executives chimed in on Slack to remind employees that the corporate’s tradition remained the similar and that Musk wasn’t going to be put answerable for main selections, noting that Agrawal was once nonetheless “the tiebreaker.”
However for any person who designated himself to start with as a “passive” investor — because of this a shareholder who does now not purpose to steer or trade keep watch over of the corporate — earlier than he joined the board, Musk seemed already to have an outsize position.
One of the issues from Twitter workers concerning the doubtlessly outsize position Musk would play echoed previous outcries that happened in recent times at Fb, the place workers again and again raised questions over the affect of arguable right-leaning board member Peter Thiel.
Dorsey tweeted that Agrawal and Musk could be an “fantastic staff.” And the invitation to the AMA along the CEO additionally looked as if it would recommend that Musk could be given better authority.
“A variety of perspectives and voices outline our provider,” Agrawal wrote in his e-mail Thursday. “And that are meant to be mirrored and embraced internally too.”
Faiz Siddiqui contributed to this file.
