Elon Musk’s bizarre demands spark mass layoffs on Twitter

Recently acquired by Elon Musk, Twitter continues to be in a fever. Its offices are being closed after a “plea of ​​allegiance” to the richest man in the world sparked a wave of resignations and layoffs.

The tech company is struggling to retain employees after Elon Musk required employees to sign a commitment to work “long hours at high intensity.”

The Twitter crisis reached new heights on Friday, when hundreds of employees reportedly rejected Elon Musk’s ultimatum to stay with the company, jeopardizing its ability to keep going.

As the company temporarily closed its offices to staff, Twitter users began to say goodbye and link to accounts on other platforms.

Hashtags like #RIPTwitter and #TwitterDown have been trending on the platform since the deadline passed for Musk’s ultimatum for the company’s remaining workforce to sign up for “high-intensity long hours” or leave. It was estimated that hundreds of remaining employees chose to leave.

Among the exits are many engineers responsible for fixing bugs and preventing outages, according to current and former employees, raising questions about the stability of the platform amid the loss of employees and sparking a hasty debate among managers about who should be asked to return.

In the first sign that the number of those refusing to sign a contract was greater than expected, Musk relaxed a return-to-office order he issued a week ago, telling employees on Thursday they would be allowed to work remotely if their managers said that they are making an “excellent contribution”.

Twitter later announced via email that it would close “our office buildings” and disable employee access to badges until Monday, according to the New York Times.

Online, users assumed that the site could go down within hours or days.

On Thursday evening, the version of the Twitter app used by employees began to slow down, according to one source familiar with the matter, who estimated that the public version of Twitter could go down overnight. The DownDetector website has reported a significant increase in user reports of problems on the site. “If it breaks, in many areas there will be no one to fix something,” the source said.

According to The Guardian, the news caused an outpouring of grief on the platform and prompted many users to link to their other social media accounts instead of Twitter as an alternative.

Musk has previously met with some senior employees to try and persuade them to stay, said one current employee and a recently quit employee who kept in touch with Twitter colleagues. According to a former employee, in a private chat of 50 Twitter employees, nearly 40 said they had decided to leave.

And in a closed group for current and former Twitter employees, about 360 people have joined a new channel called “voluntary layoffs,” according to The Guardian, citing a source.

A separate survey on Blind asked employees to estimate what percentage of people would leave Twitter based on their perceptions. More than half of respondents believe that at least 50% of employees will quit.

While it’s not clear how many employees have chosen to stay, the numbers underscore the reluctance of some employees to stay at the company, where Musk has been quick to fire half of his employees, including senior management, and is ruthlessly changing the culture to emphasize long hours and intense pace.

Early Wednesday morning, Musk sent an email to Twitter employees saying, “In the future, to create disruptive Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we need to be extremely tough.”

The email asked employees to click yes if they wanted to stay. Those who do not respond by 5:00 pm ET Thursday will be considered retired and receive severance pay, the email said.

As the deadline approached, employees puzzled over what to do. One team at Twitter decided to make a joint exit from the company, one of the outgoing employees told Reuters.