Elon Musk’s orders were clear: Close the data center.
Early on Christmas Eve, members of the billionaire’s staff flew to Sacramento — the site of
one of Twitter’s three main computing storage facilities — to disconnect servers that had kept the social network running smoothly. Some employees were worried that losing those servers could cause problems, but saving money was the priority, according to two people who were familiar with the move but not authorized to talk about it.
The data center shutdown was one of many drastic steps Mr. Musk has undertaken to stabilize Twitter’s finances. Over the past few weeks, Twitter had stopped paying millions of dollars in rent and services, and Mr. Musk had told his subordinates to renegotiate those agreements or simply end them. The company has stopped paying rent at its Seattle office, leading it to face eviction, two people familiar with the matter said. Janitorial and security services have been cut, and in some cases employees have resorted to bringing their own toilet paper to the office.
Mr. Musk
bought the social network for $44 billion in late October, saddling it with debt that will require him to pay about
$1 billion in interest annually. Speaking on
a live forum on Twitter last week, Mr. Musk compared the company to a “plane that is headed towards the ground at high speed with the engines on fire and the controls don’t work.”
Twitter was on track to have a “negative cash flow situation” of about $3 billion in 2023, he said, citing a depressed advertising environment and increased costs, like the debt payments. [...]
Mr. Davis has directed Twitter employees to
delay paying various contractors or vendors and try to negotiate those bills to smaller amounts, according to two people familiar with his instructions. The cost of one of the company’s largest contracts, with the consulting megafirm Deloitte, has been a point of particular concern for Twitter’s leadership, which wants to reduce the fees the company pays for security, tax preparation and other services, the two people said. The company has skipped payments to KPMG, an accounting and consulting firm that had been working on matters related to compliance with the Federal Trade Commission, they said. [...]
Last week, Twitter got rid of the cleaning staff at its New York offices and 10 people from corporate security, signaling that it may close one of its two buildings there, said two people familiar with the move.
At Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, where the company has
missed rent payments, Mr. Musk has done the same, consolidating workers onto two floors and closing four. He also canceled janitorial services this month, after those workers went on strike for better wages.
That has left the office in disarray. With people packed into more confined spaces, the smell of leftover takeout food and body odor has lingered on the floors, according to four current and former employees. Bathrooms have grown dirty, these people said. And because janitorial services have largely been ended, some workers have resorted to bringing their own rolls of toilet paper from home. [...]
Workers expect more layoffs. Because the sales staff was cut less than other teams in earlier rounds of dismissals, some people anticipate further cuts to the division. U.S. revenue numbers continue to flag, with
advertising revenue down significantly over the first week of December compared with where it was one year ago, two people said. [...]
But the training process for new employees has been significantly reduced, cutting to 90 minutes what was once three days of orientation that included information on compliance with privacy and security agreements with global regulators, three people said. In one case, a new hire contacted a former employee on LinkedIn to get an understanding of how services worked at the company, according to the former worker. [...]
The shutdown of the Sacramento data center, known as SMF1, set off alarm bells at Twitter, with employees being summoned to work on Christmas Eve as internal systems went down, according to Slack messages viewed by The Times. While users did not experience any immediate disruptions to the social network, three people who used to work on the company’s infrastructure called Mr. Musk’s moves reckless, potentially leading to the loss of internal data and about 30 percent of the company’s computing power that could be needed in times of high site traffic.
Source :
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/29/t...elon-musk.html