This past Wednesday, Elon Musk apparently issued an ultimatum to the Twitter staff, demanding that they either adopt his strategy for Twitter, which entails extended “hardcore” work hours, or find another place to work. By 5 o’clock, workers had to indicate whether or not they would remain. Thursday at midnight ET or you will be terminated with three months’ salary. It seems a lot of people left on their own own.
The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and others reported that hundreds of Twitter workers left after internal communications circulated on Slack. Someone who departed the company told the Post that the departure had left vital systems with just one or two engineers.
At around the same time, Platformer’s Zoe Schiffer reported that Twitter’s buildings are shuttered and badge access is prohibited until November 21. This would leave the company’s remaining workers unable to reach the San Francisco headquarters. Requests for comment were not immediately met by Twitter, which seems to have disbanded its public relations department.
This is just the latest development in the ongoing tale of Twitter under Musk’s power and influence, which began in April when he first revealed his desire to buy the business. Since becoming CEO on October 27th, Musk has fired about half of the company’s 7,500 workers while expecting the rest to put in excessive overtime. He also oversaw the sudden introduction of features like account verification to Twitter Blue, which has resulted to a rise in impersonators (including Musk himself).
Since Musk paid $44 billion to acquire the firm, fans of Twitter have been worried it is in a death spiral, and the announcement on Thursday has just added to those fears. After news of the mass evacuation spread, the hashtag #RIPTwitter, as well as the words “Damn Twitter” and “Twitter HQ,” were popular topics on the site.
New York Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been vocal in her criticism of Musk’s management of Twitter since the uproar began. Thank you to everyone who works at Twitter,” she tweeted to her 13 million fans. To paraphrase: “You all created a really important meeting space, and you deserved so much better.”
Indeed, Musk seemed to recognize the drama by tweeting an apparent jab at his own prediction that the firm may soon go bankrupt. How can you earn a modest fortune through social media? Musk tweeted late Thursday night, three hours after his deadline to employees. “Go big to little” is bad advice.
It’s possible that the controversial businessman’s reign as Twitter’s top executive won’t last forever. Musk allegedly told the court, “I expect to reduce my time at Twitter and find somebody else to run Twitter over time,” during testimony on Wednesday in a shareholder case against Tesla, the electric car manufacturer he also runs with SpaceX, the rocket builder, alleging his salary as CEO is excessive.
