To state the obvious, Twitter is imploding because a man who was born at third base and thought he hit a triple has finally shown the world that all along that his success has been luck and propped up by inherited wealth. Bonus: he is now the poster boy for the Dunning-Kruger effect!
Fine. I want to focus on another aspect of the meltdown: Employee strength in numbers. Twitter’s employees are bringing this company down by leaving an a-hole CEO who is rich AF, disparages them and their skills in public, fires half of them, and then demands that the other half work twice as hard, going “hardcore” to keep the company afloat. Dude. If you didn’t fire half the people, the other half wouldn’t need to work twice as hard to do their jobs. #math
Instead, they walked out. Because I have a potty mouth, I imagine myself walking out of Twitter’s HQ shouting “Do it yourself, mothertrucker!”
Y’all. Y’ALL!!!!! CEOs’ pay compared to the average employees’ pay has increased by 1,322%. According to the Economic Policy institute, in 2020 CEOs were making 351 times the average employee. And that was before the CEOs started making more and keeping more profits during the pandemic. In real terms, in 2020, if the average employee Joe Blow makes $50,000, the CEO makes $17,550,000. In 1965, that difference was much less, just 15 times what the average employee made. Joe Blow makes $50,000 and CEO makes $750,000. That’s the difference a 15:1 versus 351:1 salary gap makes. The CEO would not be starving?
So, why not a general strike, y’all? Twitter’s employees are bringing the company and this twatwaffled to his knees by walking out. Bank of America? Wells Fargo? Y’all paying attention? Employees are not your serfs, bound to stay at your organization as you enrich yourself and get fired with a golden parachute. They have lives they wish to enjoy. Your profit is not trickling down to their lives and making it easier for them.
If I were a CEO right now, I would not want my employees to see the power of everyone leaving at the same time. As an organizational scientist that prioritizes the people over the profits, I do. I want employees to see that a general strike will show who exactly runs the company and how exactly important they are.
