Twitter employee exodus continues as CEO downplays whistleblower claims

The situation over at Twitter HQ has been chaotic since Elon Musk redacted his $44 billion bid to buy the company last month, which led to Twitter filing a lawsuit against the Tesla executive. The situation was further exacerbated by whistleblower Peiter "Mudge" Zatko exposing alleged problems with Twitter's security mechanisms while claiming that the company had misled regulators in this domain. In its latest all-hands meeting, Twitter has downplayed these allegations while highlighting new problems.

As reported by Reuters, Twitter CEO Parag Agarwal noted in an all-hands meeting that employee attrition is now at 18.3%. This notably higher than the rate prior Elon Musk's offer. At that time, employee attrition was between 14-16%, which is in line with the industry average in Twitter's space.

In terms of responding to an attendee question of how the firm would be dealing with the high departure rate of employees, Agrawal stated that Twitter would need to "narrow our focus" proportionate to the headcount. The executive did not dive into details about how this could be done at this time.

With regards to the claims made by Mudge, Agrawal called them "foundationally, technically, and historically inaccurate". Additionally, Twitter's General Counsel Sean Edgett mentioned that the firm had already reached out to various "global agencies" prior to the exposé in order to assure them that Twitter had never lied to any regulator or even its own board.

Finally, in terms of product development, Twitter's general manager Jay Sullivan explained that the company is working on a new initiative to give users more control over what they want to see in their feed.

Twitter has been in hot water for the past few weeks now, and it remains to be seen how, and if, the company will emerge from these challenges.

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