Published 15:49 IST, December 6th 2022
Has Elon Musk converted several rooms at Twitter HQ into small sleeping quarters?
This is in line with Elon Musk's earlier demand that only people who are "hardcore" should remain at Twitter. Musk is famous for sleeping on factory floors.
- Tech
- 2 min read
Elon Musk has a "gift" for Twitter employees as he has outfitted micro-blogging platform's headquarters with bedrooms. According to a report from Forbes, when Twitter employees returned to work on Monday, they discovered that their San Francisco office had bedrooms. This is in line with Musk's earlier demand that only people who are "hardcore" should remain at Twitter. Musk was even found sleeping on the factory floor of Tesla and SpaceX during the early days of the company.
Sleeping at the office for rocket launches is one thing, but staying overnight at the office for a social media app is a bit odd. There are apparently 4 to 8 bedrooms/sleeping pods on each floor. One of the employees, whose identity was not revealed in the Forbes report, said that the office being fitted with beds was disrespectful. The employee added that there was no discussion and the beds just showed up.
Work culture at Twitter
Before acquiring Twitter, Musk had complained that no one was showing up at the Twitter headquarters. In his plan to build Twitter 2.0, Musk has decided to completely change the work culture. Before Musk, Twitter had a rather notorious work culture which received wide spread criticism when young Twitter employees uploaded videos on TikTok, depicting what a day in their life looks like. Spoiler alert - there was a lot of relaxation with a minor amount of work thrown in. Under Musk, the work culture has witnessed a pendulum swing. Another worker quoted in the Forbes' report, appreciated the introduction of bedrooms in the office. This employee reasoned that many were already putting in late nights, so it makes sense to have bedrooms so that they can at least relax. Musk's primary challenge is changing Twitter's business model. Twitter has seldom been profitable and Musk is eager to change that.
Twitter's business model
Twitter makes money from advertising by selling access to its platform to businesses and organisations that want to reach its users. The company offers several different advertising products, including promoted tweets, which are regular tweets that are promoted to appear higher in users' feeds, and sponsored accounts, which are accounts that are promoted to users as suggested accounts to follow. Twitter also sells access to its data through its Gnip product, which provides businesses with access to the full history of public tweets, as well as other data products such as real-time data streaming.
Updated 15:49 IST, December 6th 2022