More than 50 of Elon Musk’s dependable Tesla employees, largely software engineers from the Autopilot team, have joined his takeover of Twitter, according to CNBC.
The $44 billion acquisition of Twitter by SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk was finalized on October 28. Musk made his presence felt there right away. He immediately dismissed Twitter’s CEO, CFO, and heads of the policy and legal teams. He also disbanded the board of directors.
Employees from Musk’s other companies, including more than 50 from Tesla, two from the Boring Company (which is building underground tunnels), and one from Neuralink, are now authorized to work at Twitter, according to internal data seen by CNBC (which is developing a brain-computer interface).
The head of Musk’s family office, Jared Birchall, angel investor Jason Calacanis, and former PayPal COO and venture capitalist David Sacks are among the friends, advisers, and backers who are involved. Likewise, James and Andrew Musk, who previously worked for Palantir and Neuralink respectively, both share Musk’s last name.
Director of Software Development Ashok Elluswamy, Director of Autopilot and TeslaBot Engineering Milan Kovac, Senior Director of Software Engineering Maha Virduhagiri, Senior Staff Technical Program Manager Pete Scheutzow, and Jake Nocon, a member of Tesla’s surveillance unit, as a Senior Manager of Security Intelligence are just a few of the dozens that Elon Musk specifically hired from Tesla.
In order to restructure the platform, he is also pressuring them to swiftly understand everything they can about Twitter, from the source code to the standards for content moderation and data privacy.
Musk advertises himself as an ardent supporter of free expression, but he must weigh his ideals against societal norms and practical commercial considerations. Last week, as he was taking over the company, he wrote an open letter to advertisers in which he stated: “Twitter definitely cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be posted with no consequences.”
It’s not yet known how Tesla staff members will divide their time between the manufacturer and Twitter.
Employees of Tesla can typically be paid as consultants by other Elon Musk ventures, most frequently SpaceX or the Boring Company. Some of Musk’s staff members hold full-time positions at multiple of his companies. For instance, Charlie Kuehmann, vice president of materials at Tesla, is also vice president of SpaceX.
Other times, according to two Tesla employees who spoke to CNBC, Tesla employees are under pressure to assist with projects at his other companies without receiving any additional compensation because it will benefit their careers or because the work will be seen as aiding in a related party transaction or project.
The technology developed and maintained by Tesla’s Autopilot team, including its driver assistance systems marketed as Autopilot, FSD, and FSD Beta, is under more intense examination than ever before.
Investigations into possible legal violations and consumer misinformation about Tesla’s driver assistance technologies, which are still under development and do not make the company’s vehicles self-driving, are being conducted by the SEC, DOJ, and California DMV.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is still looking into whether Tesla’s driver assistance systems may have had flaws that led to or contributed to collisions. At least one NHTSA inquiry is looking into how Tesla promoted these devices on social media, including Twitter.
12-hour shifts and code reviews
While their expertise from working on Autopilot and other Tesla software and hardware does not directly overlap with the languages and systems used to build and maintain the social network, several Twitter employees told CNBC over the weekend that Tesla employees who are now at Twitter have been involved in code review at the social network. These employees requested anonymity because they feared reprisal and were not permitted to speak to the press about private affairs.
For instance, the majority of engineers in the car industry, including the technologically advanced Tesla, lack experience creating and running broadly accessible search engines and platforms.
Twitter is supported by numerous 10- or even 100-query per second (QPS) systems, each with millions of lines of code. Python is one of the favored programming languages at Tesla, and Scala has been heavily used by engineers at Twitter.
Twitter is also more subject to international laws governing hate speech and data privacy, such as the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union.
Before Musk took control, Twitter employees were requested to demonstrate his teams a wide range of technical material, to defend their work and the work of their teams, and to explain their importance to the firm. If they don’t impress, they risk being fired.
The workers claimed they fear being let go without cause or prior notice rather than being laid off with benefits. According to paperwork reviewed by CNBC, some people are concerned that they won’t be able to benefit from stock options that are supposed to vest in the first week of November.
The Twitter staffers claimed they have not yet heard concrete plans from Musk and his colleagues and are generally unaware of any potential staffing reductions within their teams, budgets, and long-term objectives.
However, Musk has imposed extremely impossible timelines on some of his to-do list items.
One immediate project is to redesign the company’s subscription software, dubbed Twitter Blue, and the company’s verification system (known sometimes as “blue checks” for the way they are denoted on the service). Employees say Musk wants that work done by the first week of November. The Verge previously reported that Musk wants to charge $20 per user per month, and to only give verification marks to the accounts of users who are paid subscribers, and would remove verification from accounts who do not pay for Twitter Blue.
