Musk creates bedrooms at Twitter, prompting city investigation as chaos piles up

Twitter chaos gets messier: On Tuesday morning, Twitter employees found their workplace had been outfitted with bedrooms.

• The night before, CEO Elon Musk had beds, nightstands, and armchairs added to the company’s San Francisco headquarters, totaling about four to eight bedrooms per floor, according to Insider.
• As a result, the city’s Department of Building inspection (DBI) is investigating the unpermitted bedrooms, prompting Musk to question Mayor London Breed’s priorities via tweet.
• The bedrooms were added for “hardcore” staffers, which include Musk loyalists like his cousins, James Musk and Andrew Musk, who are acting as full-time Twitter employees, and dozens of Tesla engineers and The Boring Company employees, per Insider.
• About 150 people from Musk’s other companies are working for Twitter.

Real-world consequences: The unconventional staffing moves come in the wake of Musk gutting the company’s workforce by more than half. The chaos of the volatile decision-making is palpable.

• Having significantly relaxed content moderation policies, the loss of Twitter’s talent base is making it difficult to fulfill basic standards.
• For instance, about 40 major corporate brands, including Amazon, Snap, and Uber, as well as the US Department of Health and Human Services, had their ads appear alongside extremist accounts, per The Washington Post.
• Three former Twitter employees have filed arbitration claims and 22 other employees are threatening to do so over severance and compensation agreement breaches, per Forbes.

Financial fallout: As a billionaire with a large fan club, Musk may feel immune to failure, but Twitter isn’t. The mounting litany of problems could accelerate the company’s financial ruin.

• Musk may view adding HQ bedrooms as trivial, but with San Francisco’s DBI working to repair its reputation tarnished by past corruption scandals, the agency isn’t in a position to give Twitter a code-violation pass, which could mean citations and possible hefty fines.
• Musk’s loyalists might be willing to go “hardcore” for him now, but with The Boring Company’s chief operations officer Jehn Balajadia on coffee-fetching duty at Twitter’s HQ, per Insider, we might see allegiance wane over time.
• The company’s recent job postings, listed with a “not for immediate hire” caveat, indicate that replacing further workforce losses might not be possible any time soon.
• Potential city fines, lawsuit settlements, and more advertisers avoiding the platform could make financial solvency impossible.
• Meanwhile, social media competitors like Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Hive Social, and newly minted Post are scheming to take advantage of Twitter’s weakened state.
• While there’s no indication that any will be able to replace Twitter at its height, a crumbling Twitter is easier to topple.

This article originally appeared in Insider Intelligence's Connectivity & Tech Briefing—a daily recap of top stories reshaping the technology industry. Subscribe to have more hard-hitting takeaways delivered to your inbox daily.

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