Engineers flock to Tesla and SpaceX because they're on the cutting edge of exciting new technology and they can have some of the highest impact in their respective fields. It's also a prestige position that will make the rest of their careers, even if the workplace environment is hellish and underpaid.
No one will ever see working at Twitter in that same light under Elon's management. We can see that Elon is already trying with his "foster a free speech platform for citizen journalism" spiel, but it's just a big social media site. These Twitter devs have plenty of options elsewhere in the industry where they won't be treated like garbage.
I skimmed the long article.
All the whining about entitlement is a non-issue. If you're fired you're fired. Doesn't matter if someone is pregnant (like the article says). Nobody has ever said pregnant women are guaranteed job security.
As for the sloppy firing, hiring back, and managers being asked to transition fast to other roles or managing more people it seems like a mess. But I think Musk did that as his way to cut the cord fast without taking 4 months to assess the situation. Twitter kinds of employees have a hate boner for Musk already, so the risk of sabotage is high. No doubt his decision was to gas them fast, and hire back trustworthy employees based on the remaining managers. That'll show managers he kept them as they are trustworthy, and trust them to pick back the right people to come back.
Most companies dont do it this way. Instead they take months to go over employee count, analyze the situation, and get into big round table discussions for months with all managers and directors who to keep and who to fire. And it becomes an arguing match as every manager wants to keep their own staff and not give any up.
The way it works in big companies is the head honcho says we need to cut XXX number or % of people. It can be as simple as the company's SG&A costs are 15% of sales and trending up lately. Lets get it back down to 13% like usual. 2% people costs is $1M. The average employee makes $100k in total comp. So, we need to fire about 10 people. He can also do a high level firing at a division/department level, but it's up to every manager involved to fight and convince everyone else who to keep or not. It can go on for ages before a final tally and people chosen are fired.
I think Musk said fuck it. Fire first, hire back any employees needed later.