Following an ultimatum from Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, who urged staff to choose between being “very hardcore” and working intense, long hours or losing their jobs, employee departures exploded at the company on Thursday.
According to Zoe Schiffer, a reporter for the tech industry newspaper Platformer, Twitter management also informed staff members on Thursday that offices were temporarily shuttered and inaccessible.
Musk stated in the ultimatum, an internal email delivered on Wednesday and seen by AFP, “Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive market, we will need to be quite rigorous.”
“This will entail putting in long hours of intense work. A passing mark will only be awarded for excellent performance, he added. By 5:00 pm New York time (2200 GMT) on Thursday, employees had been urged to click a link to demonstrate their dedication to “the new Twitter.”
One former employee, Andrea Horst, whose LinkedIn profile still reads “Supply Chain & Capacity Management (Survivor) @Twitter,” tweeted, “I may be #special, but gosh darn it, I’m just not #hardcore.”
The hashtag “#lovewhereyouworked” was added to her, and it was used by many other workers who announced their choice.
Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has drawn criticism for making significant changes to the social networking firm, which he recently acquired for $44 billion.
In addition to firing half of the company’s 7,500 employees, eliminating a work-from-home policy, and imposing excessive hours, his efforts to restructure Twitter have been beset by instability and setbacks.
His clumsy attempts to update user authentication with a contentious subscription service have resulted in a flood of false accounts and practical jokes, and key advertisers have left the platform.
