Alex Bruno
Twitter seemed to be in turmoil in the hours before Elon Musk’s Thursday deadline for workers to decide whether to remain or quit.
People familiar with the matter say Musk and his advisors spoke with certain “important” Twitter employees to prevent them from leaving.
Those sources and internal emails seen by The New York Times also claim that Musk gave out contradictory signals on the company’s remote work policy, giving the impression that he was willing to relax his stance on not allowing staff to work from home before notifying their supervisors.
Meanwhile, two sources reported an increase in the number of resignations.
Following new CEO Elon Musk’s ultimatum that workers sign up for “long working hours at maximum energy,” or go, hundreds of Twitter employees looked to have elected to resign by the deadline, 5 pm EST, with three months of severance money, the individuals claimed.
A total of 180 persons participated in a poll on the workplace app Blind, which validates users via their work emails and enables them to exchange information anonymously; 42% of respondents selected the “Taking exit option, I’m free!”
Only 7% of those polled indicated they “clicked yes to remain, I’m hardcore,” while 25% said they stayed “reluctantly.”
It is unknown how many people have stayed, but the data show that many are reluctant to stay at a business where Musk has swiftly fired half of the employees, including the top management, and is brutally transforming the culture to emphasize long hours and an intensive pace.
According to two independent sources, the business said on Friday that it would shut its headquarters and restrict badge access until Monday. According to one reliable source, security guards started evicting workers on Thursday night.
The communication staff at Twitter, which has seen significant turnover recently, declined to comment.
A former employee claims that out of a group of fifty people working at Twitter, approximately forty people discussed their plans to quit in a secret Signal discussion.
An individual familiar with the Slack group also said that about 360 current and former Twitter workers had joined a new channel labeled “voluntary layoff.”
On Thursday, some workers who were leaving the company identified themselves in their Twitter profile profiles as “softcore engineers” or as “ex-hardcore engineers,” which seemed to be a dig at Musk’s appeal for staff to be “hardcore.”
To gauge how many users they think will abandon Twitter because of the service’s image, Blind conducted a second survey. Half or more of those polled predicted that at least half of their staff will quit.
For the second time in as many weeks, Twitter’s internal chatrooms and public feeds were swamped with blue hearts and salute emojis as staff bid their farewell.
Over two dozen Twitter workers in the United States and Europe had publicly announced their resignations by 6 p.m. EST, according to tweets analyzed by Reuters.
Early on Wednesday morning, Musk sent an email to the staff of Twitter with the following message: “Going ahead, to develop a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and prosper in a more competitive market, we will need to be really hardcore.”
The email requested a “yes” response from employees who wanted to maintain employment. Employees who did not react by Thursday at 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time would be assumed to have resigned and be eligible for a severance payment, according to the email.
Employees frantically brainstormed solutions as the deadline loomed.
As one departing employee told Reuters, one team inside Twitter opted to quit the firm as a unit.
On Thursday, some workers who were leaving the company wrote in their Twitter biographies that they were “softcore engineers” or “ex-hardcore engineers” in an apparent swipe at Musk’s appeal for staff to be “hardcore.”
Source: SMH
