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Several Twitter employees have criticized Elon Musk on the job review site Glassdoor after the billionaire took over the company last month.
After purchasing Twitter, Musk fired several top executives at the company including CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal as well as Chief Legal Counsel Vijaya Gadde.
On Thursday, Twitter announced it would begin mass layoffs at the company and that employees would know by Friday whether they are being fired.
In one review on Glassdoor posted on October 30, a current senior software engineer at Twitter wrote that management under Musk is "pure chaos."
"Literally zero communication with the company. Teams being forced to work nights and weekends. Engineers interrogated over their recent work like we're interviewing for a new job," the employee wrote.
"Employees being called out publicly on Twitter. Whatever you think of this man's track record, I can't see why anyone would want to work like this. This is psychotic behavior from a CEO," they added.
Another current staff software engineer left a one-star review on October 30 and wrote that cons at the company include "New Musk culture, cruelty, unreasonable expectations, stupid ideas, bad execution, inept outside 'experts.'"
An employee left a three-star review on November 1 and said that the pros at the company are a "positive social environment, opportunity to be promoted and work on very interesting problems."
But they added that the "Musk takeover has made things pretty bad. Previously, lack of clear direction and myriad dead-end projects with no chance to be productionized," they wrote.
Negative reviews are common for companies on Glassdoor and not all of the comments left by employees of Twitter in recent days have been negative.
In a four-star review on October 29, one current employee wrote: "Best parts of working at Twitter: People, Benefits, commitment to diversity & inclusion, and you will never be bored."
In a letter released last week, Musk said he acquired Twitter because "it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner without resorting to violence."
He added that there "is currently a great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more heat and divide our society."
Since Musk's takeover, some major advertisers on the platform have said they are pulling their business over concerns about how the company's content moderation policies will change under the new leadership.
The change in leadership has spurred speculation about whether former President Donald Trump's account could soon be reinstated. In May, Musk told the Financial Times he would "reverse the permanent ban" on Trump's account if his takeover of the company went through.
Newsweek has attempted to reach out to Twitter and Musk for comment.
About the writer
Xander Landen is a Newsweek weekend reporter. His focus is often U.S. politics, but he frequently covers other issues including ... Read more