Musk taps over 50 Tesla employees to make Twitter changes

Elon Musk has reportedly looked to his Tesla workforce to help with his transformation of Twitter, with more than 50 software engineers from the car producer working on the microblogging service.

Since taking control of Twitter on October 28, Musk has made many moves to change the company. To help see his plans for the app come to fruition, he's apparently using a workforce that he trusts from his other companies.

According to CNBC, Musk is using more than 50 employees from Tesla at Twitter, as well as two from The Boring Company, and one from brain-computer interface outfit Neuralink. Of the Tesla group, the list is said to be headed up by director of software development Ashok Elluswamy, as well as director of Autopilot and TeslaBot Milan Kovac.

Others said to be involved include family office head Jared Birchall, angel investor Jason Calacanis, and founding PayPal COO David Sacks.

Musk is apparently keen to have his engineers learn as much of Twitter's workings as quickly as possible, including examining the source code and policies regarding data privacy and content moderation.

It is also thought that the Musk-affiliated engineers will be working to determine what parts of Twitter could be cut to make the company leaner and more efficient.

Musk's decision to bring in outside engineers is one of many changes the billionaire has made to Twitter in an extremely short period. Straight after the acquisition, Musk fired top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal and CFO Ned Segal.

There has also been the rumored threat of layoffs to staff, though Musk was quick to insist that layoffs wouldn't happen before November 1, as a rumor claimed there was a plan to do so to avoid paying out for stock grants due on that date.

The threat of firing has also been laid to a group of employees to implement changes to verification, which could result in a $20 per month fee to retain the blue checkmark. Musk has also ordered for the revival of video looping app Vine.

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24 Comments

bloggerblog 16 Years · 2520 comments

About 2 years ago

That’s could become a controversial move since Tesla is a public traded company and Twitter is his private company. So borrowing employees from a public company can get weird.

ranson 15 Years · 91 comments

bloggerblog said:

That’s could become a controversial move since Tesla is a public traded company and Twitter is his private company. So borrowing employees from a public company can get weird.

Not controversial at all. They will likely be paid as independent contractors by Twitter and receive a 1099 next year for tax purposes. One's original employer (Tesla in this case) cannot bar or punish the employee for simply working a second job unless it violates a non-compete or causes issues relating to performance at the original job.

DAalseth 6 Years · 3067 comments

Oh yeah this’ll work so well. Because programming self driving cars and a social media site are almost the same thing. /s

22july2013 11 Years · 3736 comments

ranson said:

bloggerblog said:

That’s could become a controversial move since Tesla is a public traded company and Twitter is his private company. So borrowing employees from a public company can get weird.

Not controversial at all. They will likely be paid as independent contractors by Twitter and receive a 1099 next year for tax purposes. One's original employer (Tesla in this case) cannot bar or punish the employee for simply working a second job unless it violates a non-compete or causes issues relating to performance at the original job.

I thought he was referring to Tesla's obligations to the SEC as a publicly traded company, not the employee's obligations to Tesla or the tax department.

M68000 7 Years · 887 comments

I think this is outrageous and should be stopped legally and enforced. Further, would be great to see the staff that is left at twitter walk out and never come back. That could be a tough thing for them to do but it would really send a message and generate a lot of news for sure.