Tuesday 15 November 2022 08:11 PM Twitter staff are likening Elon Musk to Harry Potter villain Voldemort trends now

Staff at Twitter are likening Elon Musk to Voldemort from the Harry Potter franchise because they dare not mention his name.

Employees at the social network have avoided using their new owner's name on messaging service Slack, DailyMail.com can reveal.

They fear that Musk's 'goons' from Tesla who he brought with him to Twitter will scan for mentions of 'Musk' and 'Elon' to find people being rude to him.

As a result Musk has been likened to 'He Who Must Not Be Named', or Voldemort, the villain from Harry Potter.

The claim comes from a current employee at Twitter who branded Musk 'callous' and 'not able to put on a human face'.

It starkly shows the breakdown in trust between Musk and the 3,500 employees who remain after he fired half of company. He has also axed some 4,400 contract workers cutting the number left to just over 1,000.

Since Musk completed his $44billion acquisition of Twitter last month he has shaken up the company as he tries to find new ways to make money.

But it has been a rocky ride and he botched the rollout of a new $8 verification service, mocked a US Senator who criticized him and has attracted criticism from the FTC, the telecoms regulator.

Advertisers including Lockheed Martin have paused their advertising spending on Twitter while brands such as Pepsi have been shocked at the proliferation of fake accounts which have fooled consumers.

Musk is now claiming Twitter could go bankrupt as it is losing $4million a day.

According to the Twitter employee the 'only rational explanation' for Musk's actions is that he is 'an incompetent executive who is way out of his comfort zone.'

The employee said that the mood among Twitter staff is grim and that they are getting their news about their employment status from the media, rather than their own managers.

There has been a '360 degree' change in culture from slow and incremental and respecting staff time off to Musk demanding that everyone work in the office at least 40 hours a week – with staff sleeping at their desks to meet impossible deadlines.

For many Twitter staff it seems like Musk is trying to give Twitter an 'electroshock' to make it like Tesla and SpaceX, his hard-charging companies made in his own image from the ground up.

But Musk's bullheaded approach doesn't work with Twitter, which is fundamentally different from his other ventures.

The employee said: 'Musk doesn't understand that this is an advertising business and how valuable relationships are in the industry.

'He fired the executives who have strong relationships with the advertising world. It's not really clear how we come back from that.'

The majority of people who were not fired are now looking for the exit at Twitter, a place they had been proud to call their employer because it was so transparent, said the source.

And managers are refusing to tell staff anything.

The employee said: 'The layoffs could have been done in a compassionate way but they weren't. It was callous.

'As people were being laid off Musk was tweeting about how he didn't like small talk. It's like he's not able to put on a human face.

'In the past that would have been telegraphed for months by HR. Instead we found out in an email.

'It doesn't make sense. We are all wondering how the heck has he got Tesla to be such a success?'

Among those who were fired was an employee who was eight months pregnant, but those who are on work visas tied to the company are especially vulnerable too.

They are now 'scrambling' for legal help because they are not sure if the 60 day period before they have to leave the US starts when they were fired, or when their last day is.

Others who 'want to quit can't because of their visa,' according to the employee.