After firing half of Twitter’s workforce since taking the helm, Elon Musk is enraging the remaining employees— by giving them an ultimatum if they want to stay at the company.
In an email to staff on Wednesday, he asked them to commit to working “long hours at high intensity” or leave.
The entrepreneur said the changes are necessary if the company is to succeed.
“Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore. This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade,” he wrote, noting that the site will be more “engineering-driven.”
“If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below,” he added.
Employees were given a deadline of 5 p.m. Thursday to decide. Those who wish to exit will be given three months of severance, the email said.
"Whatever decision you make, thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful,” Musk closed.
According to the New York Times, employees at Twitter just began hanging up as Elon Musk was talking during videoconference call today, apparently deciding to quit and take the severance package as the 5 pm deadline passed.https://t.co/tcky8nynnD pic.twitter.com/GGJTd3syTe
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) November 18, 2022
Many predicted the company's imminent demise after a significant percent of the remaining crew reportedly decided to jump ship.
As we’re all very aware, folks on visas are stuck, so thats who makes up most of the roughly 25% (or less than 1,000….) expected to stay. The actual impact is not yet known — there have been no internal comms about what comes next. We’re nearly 2 hours post deadline.
— Kylie Robison (@kyliebytes) November 17, 2022
Lets put this into perspective — at the beginning of this month, Twitter had 7,400 employees. Barely half way through the month, if 75% do actually stick to their decision today, the company will have shrunk by a whopping ~88%.
— Kylie Robison (@kyliebytes) November 18, 2022
One point of clarification on the tweet about 75% of twitter employees leaving— this is chatter I’m hearing about the perceptions among people at twitter. It is not based on any official company data.
— Kylie Robison (@kyliebytes) November 18, 2022
I will follow up on this thread with the official data once its known!
At the time of writing, #RIPTwitter was a trending topic on the site and people were saying their goodbyes.
Nevertheless, Musk seemed unfazed, offering up memes in response.
Late last month, in the immediate aftermath of Elon Musk acquiring Twitter and announcing he would begin implementing mass layoffs, two forlorn men appeared outside Twitter headquarters in San Francisco. They were holding cardboard boxes and said they were part of an engineering team that had been let go. Reporters were eager to talk to the men with CNBC reporter Deirdre Bosa interviewing the duo and tweeting that an “entire team of data engineers” had been let go and that “these are two of them.”
Bosa has since deleted the tweet as it turns out neither of the men worked at Twitter. One of them gave his name as “Rahul Ligma,” the other as “Daniel Johnson,” the names “Ligma” and “Johnson” representing a crude meme.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2022
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2022
🏴☠️
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2022
"How do you make a small fortune in social media? Start out with a large one," Musk tweeted, later laughing about Twitter hitting another all-time high in usage.