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BBC News: Elon Musk: Twitter locks staff out of offices until next week

Twitter has told employees that the company's office buildings will be temporarily closed, effective immediately.

In a message seen by the BBC, workers were told that the offices would reopen on Monday 21 November.

It did not give a reason for the move.

The announcement comes amid reports that large numbers of staff were quitting after new owner Elon Musk called on them to sign up for "long hours at high intensity" or leave.

The signs have been there for ages but anyone still enchanted with Mr Musk at this point is simply not paying attention.

What do all these things say about him?

  • I have been a part of many successful ventures. I am technically literate and I know how to play the press. But I took away the wrong lessons about company building, about leadership and about trust.

  • I have survived, as every leader does, because I have let talented and hard-working people do what they wanted and they needed to do, which every company wants and needs. But since I didn't build this company, since I swooped in at the back of a bad meme which I was too proud to get out of and since it and I am at the crunch of liquidity demands of my own making, all that is no longer relevant. Saving my bacon is relevant. Not having to put up my own money to defend my own folly is relevant.

  • Remember in the 80's when the businessmen bought up companies just to break them up and turn them into monetary assets? Well, no more. It's time to buy up companies and treat them like beleaguered startups. Let's cosplay, I'll be the single venture capitalist who lets half of you go, having built nothing of it but accusing all of you of sloth, incompetence and insufficient adherence to virtue; the dude-bro with an Ångström skin who can't tell productivity from activity; who thinks people working from home are hiding something, while putatively being the irreplaceable engine of more companies than there are weekdays at the same time.

  • I am the only judge of what is correct. I, or possibly hand picked people who I have worked with previously, will grasp the nuance and necessity of everything, including things to which I have not been previously exposed. Chesterton's fence is for lesser men. On every team, no one would do productive work unless I was present to observe them or lead their efforts. In short, Edward Mike Davis had the right idea, but he was small-time.

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