After Elon Musk’s ultimatum, employees leave en masse, Twitter closes offices
Twitter has temporarily closed the office buildings amidst reports of mass exodus after Elon Musk’s “hardcore” work ultimatum failed to motivate the employees to work for “long hours at high intensity”.
BBC, which has seen the message, said that the offices would reopen on Monday, November 21.
On Wednesday, Musk told employees that his goal was to build “Twitter 2.0” and for that, they have to choose between working “long hours at high intensity” or leave. He conducted a poll on the workplace app Blind for their response.
In response, 42 per cent of 180 people chose the “Taking exit option, I’m free!” in the app, which verifies employees through their work email addresses and allows them to share information anonymously, according to multiple media reports.
About 25 per cent of them said they had chosen to stay “reluctantly,” and only 7 per cent of the participants clicked “yes to stay, I’m hardcore.”
Twitter CEO Elon Musk issues ultimatum to employees, says ‘high intensity job or severance’
Reuters reported, quoting a former employee, that in a private chat on Signal with about 50 Twitter staffers, nearly 40 said they have decided to leave.
Internal Slack messages shared with CNBC showed engineers and other employees posting goodbye messages to a “watercooler” chat group in the run-up to 5 pm ET on Thursday, the deadline set by Musk.
“I’m not pressing the button,” one departing employee posted in Slack, according to the Verge.
“My watch ends with Twitter 1.0. I do not wish to be part of Twitter 2.0.”
Twitter had roughly 2,900 remaining employees before the deadline on Thursday, after Musk unceremoniously laid off about half of the 7,500 workforce when he took over and more resignations ensued.
Reuters claimed that more than two dozen employees across the United States and Europe have announced to depart in public Twitter posts. However, their resignation could not be independently verified.
(With inputs from agencies)
