- Twitter head of product said "chaos tax" from Musk's takeover bid is likely to continue, per WSJ.
- Twitter has held 15 large-scale meetings following Musk's $44 billion offer, the Journal reported.
- Some employees are optimistic that Musk can help transform the company, but others want to leave.
A top Twitter executive has told employees that Elon Musk's $44 billion takeover bid for the company had created a "chaos tax," according to internal Slack messages seen by the Wall Street Journal.
In an internal message addressing the tumultuous takeover of the company, Twitter's new head of product, Jay Sullivan, told employees: "I expect the 'chaos tax' and ups and downs to continue."
He added: "As I know more, I will find ways to share with this group!"
According to the Journal, Twitter has held 15 company-wide or division-wide meetings to address employee concerns amid upheaval following the Twitter board's decision to accept Musk's hostile takeover bid.
Sullivan himself joined as a result of this upheaval, replacing one of the two executives let go by CEO Parag Agrawal in a "shake-up" that also included a hiring freeze and rescinding job offers.
Some employees have left the company, others are looking for new jobs, while others are said to be hunkering down to see how Musk changes the company, the Journal reported.
Musk has publicly berated Twitter since agreeing a deal to buy the company, accusing it of not being politically neutral, blocking free speech, and being wrong about its estimates of the number of bots on the platform. He has put the deal "on hold" over the question of fake accounts.
Agrawal wrote a Twitter thread on Monday explaining why Musk's proposition that Twitter should take a sample of 100 users to determine the number of bots would not work. Musk replied with a poop emoji.
The Journal reported that a number of employees had expressed optimism about the takeover, with "dozens" in a Slack channel labeled "i_dissent" hoping Musk could help transform a company that had overcounted its user total for three years.
In early May, Musk said he wanted to hire more people and quintuple Twitter's revenue by 2028.