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Culture Change and Conflict on Twitter


SAN FRANCISCO — Shortly after joining Twitter in 2019, Dantley Davis gathered his employees in a conference room in the company’s San Francisco headquarters. Twitter was great, he told the group, and it was there to change it.

Mr. Davis, the company’s new vice president of design, asked employees to walk around the room complimenting and criticizing each other. He said harsh criticism would help Twitter thrive. The sticks flew quickly. Three people present said that several attendees cried during the two-hour meeting.

Mr. Davis, 43, has played a key role in behind-the-scenes efforts over the past two years to reshape Twitter’s culture. The company has long been slow to produce products, and under pressure from investors and users, executives have come to a diagnosis: Twitter’s collaborative environment has become calcified, making employees reluctant to criticize one another. The company believed that Mr. Davis was one of the answers to this question.

The ensuing turmoil revealed the trade-offs and conflicts that emerged when companies embarked on dramatic cultural shifts and placed the responsibility on hard-line managers for that change to happen.

Mr. Davis has repeatedly clashed with employees because of his outspoken style. His treatment of workers has also been the subject of several investigations by Twitter’s employee relations department and complaints that too many people have left CEO Jack Dorsey.

Company officials acknowledge that Mr. Davis may have gone too far at times, and promised to soften the way he criticizes people. But they don’t apologize and even gave him a promotion. They said employee dissatisfaction is sometimes the price to shake things up.

“This is essentially a Twitter culture change that we’re trying to sustain,” Twitter’s head of human resources Jennifer Christie said in an interview.

Mr. Davis, a former Facebook and Netflix executive who is now the company’s chief design officer, reports directly to Mr. Dorsey. When he was hired, he was told to revamp Twitter’s design team and make it more diverse. His work has been recognized as a model for other Twitter executives, and the company believes the diversity of its department has flourished under his leadership. excitement reports diversity statistics annually but it does not separate the numbers for certain parts of the company.

“It was a comeback role, and that meant changes in staffing, changes in our job, changes in the way we collaborate,” Mr Davis said in a recent interview.

He often spoke to his team about the challenges he faced as a Black and Korean man in the tech industry, and he won praise for his design work. He has spearheaded crackdowns on new media such as voice tweets and chats, and has championed efforts to clean up the conversation on Twitter, including prompts that encourage people to speak up. you read articles before sharing.

But Mr. Davis’ management style was a refreshing change for employees at Twitter, who often don’t offer the astronomical salaries normal at other social media outlets. Instead, the company has sought to attract employees with the welcoming culture displayed under the hashtag #LoveWhereYouWork. Fourteen current and former Twitter employees, who were not authorized to speak publicly, spoke to The New York Times with unusual candor about the changes they have been working with over the past two years and the changes he has brought to their workplace.

As Twitter executives gravitate towards a leaner version of their company, the tension isn’t limited to the design department and its affiliated research group. Workers sometimes complained bitterly of being demoralized.

“We have teams across the Board reporting things like ‘We’re worried about our future’,” Ms Christie said. “They talk about fear or psychological insecurity.

Credit…Arturo Holmes/Getty Images

Conflicts on Twitter echoed at other tech companies, where executives took a tougher stance with employees accustomed to hosting their workplaces. Coinbase, a cryptocurrency company that went public this year, banned political discussions at work and offered exit packages to employees who disagreed with the rule. And this month, Google will face trial before an administrative law judge after being indicted by the National Labor Relations Board. unfairly dismissing employees who protested the company decisions.

“Any big change in the draft carries a risk,” said Robert Sutton, professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University.

He said cultural shifts anger employees and sometimes cause financial instability. “There is always this balance: do we do it by socializing and having a strong culture, or do we do it with money and oppressing people?”

While some Twitter design workers were uncomfortable with the meeting, where they were supposed to criticize each other, Mr. Davis said several people thanked him for the candid feedback.

“We are kind to each other,” he said. “But being kind also means you can feel free to say what needs to be said for us to move forward together.”

More than a dozen workers, Mr. Davis said he would pressure his workers to improve performance, and he quickly criticized, demoted or fired more than a dozen workers. When employees were let go, he and other managers sometimes followed up on staff exits by sending emails notifying them of their bad deeds.

Many employees feared that they would be in line at the chopping block. While Mr. Davis, who manages 200 people, stressed the importance of giving critical feedback, he sometimes lashed out at workers who, according to employees, criticized him.

Others, however, believed that Mr. Davis’ changes were necessary for Twitter’s survival. An employee said the company needed to toughen up.

In late 2019, complaints came to Twitter’s employee relations unit, which consists of lawyers investigating workplace issues. The unit examined the charges that Mr. Davis had created a culture of fear. Among the concerns was that he had made a biased statement to another executive.

The comment came during a meeting where Liz Ferrall-Nunge, who leads Twitter’s research team, shared her concerns about diversity on Twitter and talked about her experience as a woman of color. Mr. Davis told Asian-American Ms. Ferrall-Nunge that if she wore sunglasses she would pass as white, three people familiar with the investigation.

Ms Ferrall-Nunge, who left Twitter in 2020, declined to comment. Twitter declined to comment on the episode’s recording, citing employee privacy.

Twitter staffers who were aware of the incident said they expected better from Mr. Davis due to his openness about diversity. Others have defended its track record on diversity, noting that more slack has been given to white rulers while exerting less effort on diversity issues.

In a lengthy Google document submitted in February 2020, Mr. Davis praised Twitter’s friendly culture. But he criticized the quality of the design and argued that employees were too quick to say yes to projects rather than criticize them. He argued that the overly courteous atmosphere stifled honest feedback.

Employees who received the memo noticed that they could see comments from human resources representatives and managers who edited the document in the margins. They were asking Mr. Davis to turn down his voice. She said other people have told her she has a “tough love” balance.

That summer, Mr. Davis was the target of online harassment. Extremist groups said they believed they were involved in kicking themselves off Twitter. He received death threats and his personal information was published on the Internet.

“I would get death threats at 12 o’clock and then I would have a meeting at 12:05,” Mr. Davis said.

In early 2021, another employee relations investigation into his behavior was underway in response to complaints that a culture of fear persisted. Ms. Christie said employee relations is reviewing every employee complaint and trying to change Mr. Davis’ behavior.

“We have to find our own method of Twitter direct feedback that is still empathetic, yet respectful,” he said. “It’s not an easy combination.Mr Davis added that he was “heartbroken” by the employee complaints.

Company data was beginning to reveal widespread discontent within the design and research teams. Employees said attrition under Mr Davis had increased and was nearly double the overall attrition rate on Twitter. In annual surveys, employees working for Mr. Davis consistently said they felt “psychologically insecure” at a higher rate than other Twitter employees.

“I heard and absorbed feedback on culture and morale,” Mr Davis wrote in a note shared with the management team seen by The Times. “I love and deeply respect this team, it’s the strongest team I’ve ever worked with, and yet it’s clear that many of you don’t feel it from me. I’m taking a step back to think about my style and approach.”

In March, after a year of elections and coronavirus misinformation, many employees struggled with burnout. Mr. Davis has announced that he plans to move away from his duty of performance culture.

“My goal is to transition to a team of belonging that is less transactional and more focused on care and support,” Mr. Davis said in an email to employees. She voiced the harassment she received and asked employees to be patient if they felt she wasn’t doing enough to support them.

“I didn’t celebrate the wins, I focused entirely on what was wrong,” Mr. Davis said, describing the feedback he received from his employees. “Since then, I’ve spent some time working on it. We celebrate the wins, we find ways to bring the team together.”

Current employees said the sudden layoffs and harsh feedback continued. They found evidence of their concern in Nikkia Reveillac, head of Twitter’s research division.

Ms Reveillac told Mr Davis and other employees that her advocacy made it scary for employees to give her feedback. Went to Mr Dorsey in May. In a message to his co-workers, he said the culture beneath Mr. Davis was toxic and was causing untenable attrition. Mr Dorsey did not answer.

Weeks later, Ms. Reveillac was abruptly fired from the company and her business accounts were locked. “Team, I couldn’t say a proper goodbye. I love and miss you,” she tweeted. Ms. Reveillac and Twitter declined to comment on her departure.

At a staff meeting a short time later, the two attendees, Mr. Davis, told employees not to assume that Ms. Reveillac left the company because of disagreements with him. But without a clear explanation, employees were left to wonder if his sudden departure was a response to his concern going to Mr. Dorsey.

Mike Isaac contributing reporting.





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