Twitter’s attrition rate has upped to 18.3%, the company’s leadership told employees at an all-hands staff meeting on Wednesday 25 August 2022, according to a report from Reuters. The company is struggling to address a variety of challenges ranging from Peiter Zatko’s whistleblowing allegations to the ongoing legal battle with Elon Musk.

Prior to Musk’s $44 billion offer in April, the company’s attrition rate stood between 14% and 16% which is at par for the tech industry, Reuters reported. 

The meeting comes in the wake of Zatko’s complaint that was made public yesterday. In his 84-page report to various federal regulators, the former DARPA project manager had listed a series of cybersecurity flaws at Twitter and how the company had not been taking adequate steps to address the issues. Zatko has alleged that the microblogging site has misled regulators about its cybersecurity. More explosively perhaps, is his allegation that the company did not know how to deal with spam accounts.

At the meeting, employees had questions ranging from whether the company would be promoting junior staffers to empty positions, to questions about how the company would reach its quarterly and yearly targets, given the exodus of employees the company has been witnessing in the last few months. 

“The only way for us to deliver is by narrowing our focus to fewer things and for that to be proportionate to number of people here,” CEO Parag Agarwal said, according to Reuters. 

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On the same day, the Senate Judiciary Committee said that it had subpoenaed Zatko and would have a hearing on 13 September, which coincides with the day that Twitter’s shareholders will vote to approve the deal with Musk or not. 

Since Zatko’s complaints went public, Twitter has moved to release its own version of the events, saying that the 51-year-old’s statement was “riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies” and that he had been fired because of “ineffective leadership and poor performance.”