Musk enlists Tesla employees as well as investors and friends to help complete his Twitter overhaul

Elon Musk has reportedly hired more than 50 of his Tesla engineers to revise the Twitter code after he completed his takeover of the social media company, dissolved its board and fired senior employees.

According to internal data seen by: CNBCMusk brought in more than 50 of his Tesla employees, who mainly worked on the autopilot team at the electric car company, to review and work on the code for Twitter.

The group includes more than 50 Tesla employees, two employees from another Musk company that builds underground road networks, the Boring Company, and one from Neuralink, a company developing implantable brain-machine interfaces.

In addition to employees, Musk has attracted other investors and friends for the overhaul. Jared Birchall, the head of Musk’s family office, is now involved, as are his angel investing friends and venture capitalists Jason Calacanis and David Sacks.

A former Tesla engineer not involved in Musk’s Twitter plans told the Washington Post that Tesla engineers would struggle to understand the code of the social media platform. The former employee said anyone coding Tesla technology would struggle with the widely distributed social network code.

One key difference is that Twitter works with code written in Scala and an 18-year-old programming language, compared to the much older and less concise Python programming language used by Tesla.

She former employee told the Washington Post“The idea of ​​Elon being flanked by his Tesla engineers reviewing Twitter code is laughable.”

It is not yet known whether Musk’s new Twitter recruits will remain on the social media platform full-time or split schedules between the two companies.

Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter on October 28 last week. Almost immediately, the tech billionaire fired several top social media company employees and dissolved the board.

Musk has fired Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, general counsel Sean Edgett and its policy and legal teams.

Musk will now take over as CEO, although he publicly referred to himself as “Chief Twit.”

Chief Marketing Officer Leslie Berland and Head of Product Jay Sullivan have also announced their departures.

Chief People and Diversity Officer Dalana Brand announced in a LinkedIn message on Tuesday that she had also resigned last week. General Manager for Core Technologies Nick Caldwell confirmed his departure on Twitter and changed his profile bio to “former Twitter exec” Monday night.

Twitter’s ad chief Sarah Personette tweeted on Tuesday that she was resigning after the exodus of nearly all senior ranks.

It now looks like more Twitter employees can follow. Musk has plans to release a quarter of Twitter’s workforce in his first round of layoffs after its $44 billion acquisition, according to reports.

It comes as the new Twitter CEO has reportedly issued an ultimatum to the social media platform’s engineers, instructing them to renew Twitter’s verification system in less than a fortnight or he would be fired.

Celebrity attorney Alex Spiro, a longtime legal representative of Musk, led the talks over the job cuts, according to the Washington Post.

The first round of layoffs will affect nearly every department and are expected to specifically affect sales, product, engineering, legal and trust and safety in the coming days, the Post’s source said.

Twitter had more than 7,000 employees at the end of 2021, according to a regulatory filing, and a quarter of its workforce is nearly 2,000 employees.

Musk’s idea to revamp the verification process for Twitter has been controversial so far. Doing so would make the social media platform charge for its verified tick. Musk’s plan will see and cost $8 a month for the blue check.

While doing the rounds at his new company, Musk laid out his plan for Twitter’s verified system on the social media platform itself.

“Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue tick is nonsense,” Musk wrote. ‘Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.’

A blue tick badge allows other Twitter users to verify that other users are who they say they are.

Musk added that those who sign up for the system “are given priority in replies, mentions and searches, which are essential to beat spam/scams, the ability to post long video and audio, half the number of ads, and paywall- bypass for publishers willing to work with us.’

The world’s richest man was previously fined $20 a month for blue check verification, but appeared to cut costs after criticism from horror author Stephen King.