Hundreds of Twitter Employees Leaving After Elon Musk's 'Extremely Hardcore' Work Demands

[MacRumors]

Hundreds of Twitter employees today resigned from the company rather than opting in to be part of "Twitter 2.0" under Elon Musk, according to The Verge. Musk earlier this week told workers that Twitter will be "extremely hardcore" going forward, with employees expected to put in long hours at high intensity. "Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade," he said.

Musk on Wednesday sent out a Google form and asked employees to respond "Yes" by 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday if they wanted to stay at the company. Hundreds decided not to, and have said their goodbyes in Slack and on Twitter. Departing employees will receive a severance package.

When he took over Twitter, Musk laid off approximately half of the 7,500 employees that were at the company at the time, and since then, he has continued firing employees who have been critical of him, including longtime engineers.

Twitter employees that spoke to The Verge said that given the number of people that have left, Twitter could "start breaking soon" and that it will be "extremely hard for Twitter to recover."

With the exodus of employees, Twitter temporarily closed all office buildings and suspended badge access. According to Zoë Schiffer, Musk and his team are "terrified employees are going to sabotage the company."

In the final hours ahead of the deadline, Musk reportedly attempted to convince employees to stay. Bloomberg says that key staff were brought into meetings and Musk also walked back his in-office work demands. He had said that all employees needed to work from the office 40 hours a week, but today he said that working from home was allowed with monthly in-person meetings and managerial approval.

At the current time, Musk's first initiative is on pause as Twitter makes changes. Last week, Twitter introduced a more expensive $8 version of Twitter Blue that included a verification badge, and it turned out that debuting widespread verification led to account impersonation that impacted numerous companies.

Article Link: Hundreds of Twitter Employees Leaving After Elon Musk's 'Extremely Hardcore' Work Demands

 

[Seoras]

Why pay severance to get rid of dead weight when you can just chase them out of the door with the threat of hard labour.

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

It’s not even worth it anymore. Peace & family time over anything. Twitter will end up like MySpace or it will go bankrupt. It’s coming!

 

[macsplusmacs]

WOW!!!!!

We are witnessing the real time destruction of Twitter by the guy on the hook for the $44 billion boondoggle he paid for.

Actual view of Twitter's bank account:

 

[spootage]

Almost feels like he wanted to run it into the ground.

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

WOW!!!!!

We are witnessing the real time destruction of Twitter by the guy on the hook for the $44 billion boondoggle he paid for.

What a waste of money. He could have used that money to save humanity or eliminate world hunger. I feel really bad for the people working at Twitter and they have to deal with Elon. The fact it’s around Thanksgiving and holidays time makes it worst. I believe in Karma and Elon should too. 🧿🪬

 

[macsplusmacs]

Almost feels like he wanted to run it into the ground.

Thankfully, something will come up and replace it.

Twitter created a great "commons". There is a need for that still on the internet.

It will arrive.

But not from Enron.

 

[macsplusmacs]

I'm confused.

He's a billionaire so he is supposed to be smarter than me...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1592221676934422528

 

[macos9rules]

If only he could buy Meta next…

 

[Red Oak]

I bet the ones that stay, work hard and excel will get VERY RICH

I know - something hard to understand for those who are offended when it rains

And, who try to crap on everyone else’s success

 

[STOCK411]

it would have taken Musk longer to literally light $44 Billion dollars on fire than it did for him to "figuratively" do it with this ******** that is "owning" twitter

 

[unQuestionable]

Y’all are funny. This is how you rebuild a company and make it a whole new successful thing. Just relax. It’s obviously going to be a transitory period. Watch and see for sure. Good stuff.

 

[Mike. Just Mike.]

Why pay severance to get rid of dead weight when you can just chase them out of the door with the threat of hard labour.

What a problematic response. What Elon is pushing here is clearly wage theft. He's exposed Twitter to so much liability from the folks he has fired, I'll be surprised if he doesn't end up with a class action employment lawsuit.

Seriously, @Seoras, you should feel bad about the anti-worker sentiment in that remark. An employer is not entitled to more work for the same money.

 

[magicschoolbus]

I can’t believe people worship this guy. It’s unreal.

 

[Mike. Just Mike.]

Y’all are funny. This is how you rebuild a company and make it a whole new successful thing. Just relax. It’s obviously going to be a transitory period. Watch and see for sure. Good stuff.

No, this is not how you do any of that stuff. This is how you acquire a class action lawsuit from all of the people you mistreated, bullied, and fired.

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

Y’all are funny. This is how you rebuild a company and make it a whole new successful thing. Just relax. It’s obviously going to be a transitory period. Watch and see for sure. Good stuff.

Not sure how. Twitter still has a massive problem with spam and bots on a daily basis. Elon is too busy and worrying about firing people instead. It almost seems like he hates Twitter. He wants it gone.

 

[Rogifan]

Apparently Twitter employees were told (with no explanation as to why) that all office buildings are closed and not to come back to until Nov 21. And employees responsible for critical infrastructure and keeping the service running have quit. I get the feeling even people who were cheering Musk on (because they thought all he’d do is nuke the content moderation teams) are like WTF.

 

[Zest28]

You guys got it wrong. Elon Musk didn’t buy Twitter to make money, he bought it for the greater good.

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

I can’t believe people worship this guy. It’s unreal.

Before that happens. Elon will be going to prison or he might take himself to planet Mars. Oh yeah, he will claim it right away.

 

[macsplusmacs]

This may be one of the biggest reasons for the lockout:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1593399683086327808

 

[Mike. Just Mike.]

I bet the ones that stay, work hard and excel will get VERY RICH

I know - something hard to understand for those who are offended when it rains

And, who try to crap on everyone else’s success

It's remarkable how many people worship Elon's "success." This is a person who has never had to worry about the consequences of his own failure actually harming his ability to survive demanding that everybody else damage their lives and relationships so that the BILLIONAIRE can "succeed"?

No thanks.

 

[DeepWebinar]

Wow what a business genius. I apologize to all the musk fanboys I’ve called weird on this website. I was obviously wrong.

 

[macsplusmacs]

Maybe he will just take a rocket to mars and be done with this.

Oh... wait.

 

[Coochie Boogs]

Twitter was already ****, now he has turned into a big pile of ****.

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

Do you guys think it will be ideal to apply for a job at Twitter? I wonder if they have also freeze the hiring. Definitely don’t wanna be in the engineering or design department.

I wonder if Elon had let go of the custodial workers as well. Demanding them to clean the toilets for hours, spotless. Perhaps, he’s cleaning the sinks himself?