More Twitter employeers are leaving the company as leaders try to address multiple challenges.
On Wednesday, executives told staff about the exodus that comes amid the latest whistleblower allegations and a legal battle with billionaire Elon Musk.
Employee attrition is currently 18.3%, Twitter executives told staff during a company-wide meeting, audio of which was heard by Reuters.
The months-long chaos related to the Musk takeover has caused some staff to flee, current employees had told Reuters.
Before Musk made his $44 billion offer to buy the company, attrition hovered between 14% and 16%, which was consistent with competitors, executives had previously said.
The staff meeting was held a day after Twitter’s former security chief Peiter ‘Mudge’ Zatko said in a whistleblower complaint that the social media company misled federal regulators about its defenses against hackers and spam accounts.
On Tuesday, Twitter’s ex-security chief accused the company of lying about bots and security.
The San Francisco-based company is also embroiled in a legal battle with Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk after the world’s richest person said in July he was ending an agreement to buy the company in a $44 billion deal alleging it had violated the deal contract.
Musk has accused Twitter of hiding information about how it calculates the percentage of bots on the service. A trial is scheduled for October 17.
Twitter Chief Executive Parag Agrawal reassured employees on Wednesday that Zatko’s accusations were ‘foundationally, technically and historically inaccurate’.
During the meeting, Twitter staff submitted questions to company leaders on whether Twitter would hire or promote more junior staff members and how Twitter could be expected to hit its growth targets given the employee exodus.
‘The only way for us to deliver is by narrowing our focus to fewer things and for that to be proportionate to number of people here,’ Agrawal responded.
Jay Sullivan, Twitter’s general manager for consumer and revenue product, gave early details of a new project to consider ways of letting users have more control over the content they see on Twitter.
Zatko is scheduled to appear before the U.S Senate Judiciary Committee for a hearing on the whistleblower claims on September 13. That’s the same day that Twitter shareholders will vote on whether to approve the $44 billion takeover deal with Musk.
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