According to a copy of a late-night internal email received by the billionaire and acquired by CNN, Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk has given employees until Thursday evening to commit to “very rigorous” work or else leave the company.
In the future, Musk said, “We will need to be incredibly hardcore to construct a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in a more competitive market. “This will entail putting in long hours of intense work. The only acceptable performance will be extraordinary.
Musk continues in the message by outlining how Twitter will be “far more engineering-driven” before giving the crew a deadline. The letter asks personnel to click “yes” on what looks to be an online form if they are confident they want to participate in the new Twitter.
Any employee, according to Musk, who has yet to do so by 5 p.m. ET on Thursday, will be paid severance for three months. The message was initially reported by The Washington Post.
The email, with the subject line “A fork in the road,” was sent when Musk and Twitter staff have been at odds publicly and privately about his management style for the firm. Additionally, it follows Musk’s ouster of Twitter’s senior executives, the dissolution of the board of directors, and the reduction of about half the workforce, which included critical positions in curation, wellness, public policy, and other departments.
On Wednesday, Musk stated that he anticipated the “basic organizational restructure” at Twitter to be accomplished by the end of this week during testifying in a Delaware courtroom over his Tesla compensation plan. He continued that despite spending the “lion’s share” of his time at Twitter rather than his other businesses during the previous few weeks, he doesn’t anticipate it to continue indefinitely.
Over time, Musk stated, “I expect to reduce my time at Twitter and find someone else to operate Twitter.”
While waiting for the platform to change, Musk has set high goals for himself and his team to meet to boost the business’s bottom line as soon as possible. Musk is also said to have given unclear instructions to staff members, such as asking them to print out numerous pages of recently created code before directing them to shred it.
At least one Twitter employee also tweeted about dozing asleep at work. Musk has admitted that he has occasionally worked up to 120 hours a week and slept on the floor at a Tesla facility.
Employees at Twitter have resisted Musk and expressed worry. In one case, workers gave Musk and his team a document earlier this month outlining their concerns regarding his then-proposed plan to launch a system where users could pay to receive a verification checkmark. Many of the advised precautions were not implemented when Musk released the system, which led to some of the employees’ fears being rapidly realized. Just two days after its debut, Twitter halted the system’s deployment. He announced on Tuesday that he expects to resume it later this month.
In the memo, Musk said, “Thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful, whichever conclusion you decide.
