In the moments before Elon Musk bought Twitter, the company\u2019s Slack channels were lit up with nervous anticipation. It had been days since Twitter leadership had shared anything with them, and after a weekend\u2019s worth of reports that a sale was imminent, employees were looking for answers.<\/p>\n

For the first few hours of the morning, none came. Work all but came to a halt, employees told me. Like a classroom where the teacher is late and students are attempting to self-govern, one said. A \u201chellhole,\u201d said another. One thread, in which an employee asked good-naturedly whether anyone was excited<\/em> about the prospect of working for Musk, drew dozens of responses, many of them quite ugly.<\/p>\n