X is building a trading app. Should you join?
If you've been holding out for a career at X (fka Twitter) under Elon Musk's new leadership, the wait has been long and arduous. With many employees cast on the street over the past year, X has just started to hire again. And it reportedly has its eye on creating a new trading platform to function within Musk's proposed superapp.
Hires have been few as yet and given that X's careers page is a single email address, it's not clear who it's looking for. Should you aspire to join? Looking at statements from X employees, you might want to hold off.
On jobs forum site Blind, X people are leaning towards an exit. "Most of us are trying to get out," one said while, in response to one user asking if they had a shot at joining X, multiple people simply said "stay away."
Twitter's rating on Blind at the moment is 3.3 stars, not intrinsically terrible. However, of the over 200 hundred reviews logged this year, the average is a disastrous 2.1 stars. 46% of reviews in 2023 give X just one star. Most of its five-star reviews in 2023 are also highly critical of Musk, their scores actually reflecting what they call "Twitter 1.0"
Engineers say morale is low and the "culture is dead," even those that joined just before Musk did. An account manager that worked there before the takeover says the "perks are all gone" under Musk's reign, with benefits cut and paternity leave shortened." However, one employee says that the "only good thing left is the equity price snapshot at $54."
Are there any upsides? The staff speak highly of each other, with one engineer calling them "some of the loveliest people you could ever meet."
Some engineers say they joined X for the pay. With all the layoffs, they may have gotten an even better deal. While many engineers are earning less under Musk (according to Levels.fyi), some senior engineers are earning more.
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