San Francisco Investigating Bedrooms Inside Twitter Offices, Musk Fires Back at City

Elon Musk's Twitter profile on a smartphone placed on printed Twitter logos, on April 28, 2022. Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters

San Francisco’s Department of Building Inspection said Tuesday it was investigating a complaint against Twitter for building bedrooms inside office premises, as Elon Musk promises to bring about an “extremely hardcore” culture within the tech giant.

“Wonder how much office can be converted to ‘bedrooms’ before it runs afoul of San Francisco code or at least requires a permit and inspections,” said a Twitter user on Dec. 6, to which another user replied, “Hey @sf311 do you know who should be checking this out?” referring to the primary customer service center for the City of San Francisco.

The issue sprang into prominence following a Forbes article the previous day talking about Twitter offices with modest bedrooms, unmade mattresses, and drab curtains.

SF311 replied within a span of a few minutes: “Thank you for your inquiry. This issue has been reported to Department of Building Inspection. Your posting has been noted on existing Service Request Number: 16152343. ^SL”

Patrick Hannan, the communications director for the department, said in a statement, according to media outlets, “We investigate all complaints.”

“We need to make sure the building is being used as intended. There are different building code requirements for residential buildings, including those being used for short-term stays.”

“Everyone in San Francisco deserves a safe place to live, work, play and sleep, and no one is above the law,” Hannan said.

Hannan added, “We are reaching out to building representatives so we can conduct a site inspection as part of our investigation. If we find Suite 900 no longer meets the building code, we’ll issue a notice of violation, which will be posted to our website and at the site, just like all notices of violation.”

Responses to San Francisco Investigation

Musk shot back at the investigation, writing on Twitter: “So city of SF attacks companies providing beds for tired employees instead of making sure kids are safe from fentanyl. Where are your priorities @LondonBreed!?” tagging Democrat city mayor London Breed, and referring to a San Francisco Chronicle article about a 10-month-old infant suffering from an accidental fentanyl overdose Tuesday at a Marina district playground.

In September, three out of four drug-related deaths in San Francisco involved fentanyl—a powerful synthetic opiate drug that is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. There were 451 overdoses in 2022, according to an Oct. 17 report, with 319 involving fentanyl.

The death rates in California are increasing at an alarming rate, with a quarter of all the overdose deaths in San Francisco happening within the city’s homeless population.

Besides this, the homelessness situation in San Francisco is becoming uncontrollable. Nearly 20,000 people are living homeless in the city over the course of a year, with the main reasons being substance abuse and mental illness.

Many Twitter users pointed to the issues as replies to the SF311 tweet, while others talked about attacks on Musk.

“Each and every level of left power (fed, state, local, media, Congress, activists) will attack @ElonMusk” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch.

Last month, Musk issued an ultimatum to many remaining Twitter employees, asking them to choose between committing a new “extremely hardcore” engineer-drive operation and quitting the organization with severance pay.

Workers have claimed to have slept in the office to meet the high work demands after the Musk takeover. Evan Jones, an employee of Twitter, said, “When you need something from your boss at elon twitter,” with a picture of Esther Crawford, Twitter’s director of product management, lying in a sleeping bag in an office.

Crawford retweeted the picture and said, “When your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork”

Crawford added, “Since some people are losing their minds I'll explain: doing hard things requires sacrifice (time, energy, etc). I have teammates around the world who are putting in the effort to bring something new to life so it’s important to me to show up for them and keep the team unblocked.”