Elon Musk issued an ultimatum on Wednesday, and as a result, Twitter offices are closing and staff members are quitting in droves.
The CEO of Twitter demanded that staff members either agree to the company’s “very strict” culture of “long hours at high intensity” or accept severance pay. According to The Washington Post, anyone who did not sign the commitment by Thursday at 5 p.m. ET would receive three months of severance pay.
According to the New York Times, hundreds of resignations began to pour in hours before the curtain call. Additionally, Twitter later sent out an email announcing that it will close its office buildings and disable employee badge access until Monday as waves of employees choose to take the three months’ severance package.
Before the Thursday deadline, Musk and his advisers held meetings with “critical” Twitter employees in an attempt to dissuade them from leaving, reports say. He also seemed to retreat on his stance on not allowing people to work from home in confusing messages about the company’s remote work policy.
The departure of Twitter is the latest in a long series of developments that have affected the business since Musk’s $44 billion takeover. Musk sacked key executives, cut the workforce in half, and fired any surviving employees who dared to rub his ego the wrong way on Twitter earlier this month.
Musk presented Wednesday’s 36-hour notice to resign or commit to “a breakthrough Twitter 2.0” as a way to offer the company a competitive edge, but the move is likely an effort to save costs as the prospect of bankruptcy grows more imminent.
#RIPTwitter and #GoodbyeTwitter were the top trending hashtags as word of the terrible situation inside Twitter circulated and users used the opportunity to reflect on happy moments on the social media network before the lights went out. Other (more dependable) websites like Instagram, Twitch, YouTube, and Twitch were also frequently linked to.
Musk has tried to stop the employee loss by bringing in managers and engineers from his other companies, like Tesla, but sources claim that many of them are not familiar with the workings of social media.
The departure of thousands of employees in such a short period of time raises questions about how Twitter will continue to manage misinformation and carry out day-to-day operations in the future.
The Washington Post asserted that only two or even no engineers are needed to run Twitter’s essential infrastructure. A former employee told the Post, “I know of six important systems (like’serving tweets’ levels of crucial) which no longer have any engineer
“There is no longer even a skeleton crew manning the system. It will continue to coast until it runs into something, and then it will stop.”
Shortly after news of the latest departures, Elon Musk tweeted, “How do you make a small fortune in social media? Start out with a large one.”