Twitter Employees Lose Slack and Jira Access

Twitter Employees Lose Slack and Jira Access

News by Roberto Orosa
Published: February 25, 2023

Twitter’s Slack access has shut down, cutting the main communication channel of around 100 employees.  

According to a Platformer report, workers were told that the company’s private channel-based messaging app will have “routine maintenance,” and that the company was implementing a deployment freeze.  

However, according to a Slack employee, the routine maintenance never happened and was manually shut down by someone from the company. “That’s bullsh*t,” the employee exclaimed.  

Jira, the software used by Twitter’s engineers, reportedly also stopped working on the same day leading most of the company’s employees to end their work day abruptly. The employees gained access to Jira a day after but not to Slack, prompting the employees to take another day off.  

For the staff on Twitter, losing access to the app means losing access to their chats and files needed to work. While reasons for the Slack and Jira shutdown remain uncertain, Twitter workers anonymously expressed their anger through the workplace chat app Blind, believing this all happened due to CEO Elon Musk’s cost-cutting measures.  

One employee presumes the company did not pay its Slack bill. “Now everyone is barely working. Penny wise, pound foolish,” the employee added.  

Some have taken the momentary shutdown as a sign to leave the company and look for jobs elsewhere. “Oddly enough, it’s the Slack deactivation that has pushed me to finally start applying to get out,” wrote another employee. 

Since Musk took over the platform last October, multiple organizational changes had been implemented - one of which was the company’s infamous layoffs, slashing 50% of the workforce 

In a video conference call last week, Musk also revealed his plans to pass on the CEO role by the end of 2023, once the platform is more “stabilized.”  

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