Twitter stands to lose another 75% of its workforce after CEO Elon Musk offered his employees an ultimatum, causing many to resign overnight.
On Wednesday, Elon Musk sent out an email giving his employees a 5 pm Thursday deadline to either choose to remain at the new “Twitter 2.0,” as Musk is calling it, or leave the company with three months of severance pay. The email asked them to make a choice: either confirm their willingness to work “long hours at high intensity” or resign from their positions and receive three months of severance pay.
In the email, Musk said,
“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.”
After the deadline passed, hundreds of employees posted messages on Twitter’s Slack, announcing that they were not going to remain at the company. One employee posted, “My watch ends with Twitter 1.0. I do not wish to be part of Twitter 2.0.”
Before the deadline on Thursday, there were about 2,900 employees remaining after Musk cut the 7,500-person workforce in half and received subsequent resignations after these layoffs.
While it is unclear how many Twitter employees have confirmed their resignation, Fortune reporter Kylie Robison reported that about 75% of the remaining employees decided to leave the company.
Robison tweeted,
“What I’m hearing from Twitter employees; It looks like roughly 75% of the remaining 3,700ish Twitter employees have not opted to stay after the ‘hardcore’ email.”
https://twitter.com/kyliebytes/status/1593391167718113280?s=20&t=KfI89CuEByfE3Y7CjuJsWg
She also posited that about 25% of the remaining employees are on visas, and therefore stuck at the company, which would be less than 1,000 employees.
It has also been reported that the “critical” teams that make up Twitter have mostly resigned. Employees, both remaining and leaving, have reported that they expect the platform to break soon.
“It feels like all the people who made this place incredible are leaving,” one staff member said. “It will be extremely hard for Twitter to recover from here, no matter how hardcore the people who remain try to be.”
However, Musk doesn’t seem too worried about the current state of the company, tweeting, “The best people are staying, so I’m not super worried.”
He also Tweeted,
“How do you make a small fortune in social media?
Start out with a large one.”
How do you make a small fortune in social media?
Start out with a large one.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2022
After a large number of employees decided to resign after Musk offered his ‘ultimatum,’ he sent out a follow-up email that softened the ban on remote work. He modified his mandatory in-office work policy, telling workers that they could work remotely if they choose to do so. He said, “All that is required for approval is that your manager takes responsibility for ensuring that you are making an excellent contribution.”
For those who have not chosen to resign, Twitter sent out an email on Thursday informing employees that their badge access to the office buildings will be disabled until Monday. It has been reported that this is due to concerns about the company being sabotaged by disgruntled employees.
Zoë Schiffer, the managing editor at Platformer, said, “We’re hearing this is because Elon Musk and his team are terrified employees are going to sabotage the company. Also, they’re still trying to figure out which Twitter workers they need to cut access for.”