Twitter owner Elon Musk continued to hammer down on the staff he had left on Wednesday in a midnight email that offered them a choice: Be a part of the new ‘hardcore’ Twitter or leave.
In the email, reported by the Washington Post, the tech billionaire told employees that Twitter would “need to be extremely hardcore” going forward. In Musk parlance, this apparently means “working long hours at high intensity” and delivering an “exceptional performance,” according to the email. Employees who wanted to be a part of the new Twitter were told they had to sign a pledge.
“If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below,” Musk wrote in the email, which included a link to the online form.
Those who didn’t like Musk’s vision, meanwhile, could choose to leave the company with three months of severance. The chief twit gave employees until 5 p.m. ET on Thursday to sign the pledge.
The Post’s report was corroborated by Gergely Orosz, author of the Pragmatic Engineer newsletter on Substack, and CNN, which posted a copy of the email on Twitter.
Here’s the text of the email Musk sent to Twitter staff overnight.
Those who don’t commit to being “extremely hardcore” by 5pm ET today must leave the company. ‼️
Story: https://t.co/expt0d63dH pic.twitter.com/C8VDjRBvk1
— Donie O’Sullivan (@donie) November 16, 2022
Gizmodo reached out to Twitter for confirmation on Wednesday morning but did not receive a response. After Musk’s layoffs, Twitter no longer has a communications department.
In addition to cutting Twitter’s workforce in half since he took ownership of the company, Musk appears to be focused on weeding out anyone who criticises or disagrees with him. On Tuesday, the Twitter owner fired employees who were shitposting about him in Slack with an email, which stated that their behaviour had “violated company policy.”
After some employees shared that they had been fired on Twitter, Musk mocked them in a tweet.
“I would like to apologise for firing these geniuses. Their immense talent will no doubt be of great use elsewhere,” Musk tweeted.
Tuesday wasn’t the only day Musk quashed rebellion, though. One day earlier, Musk fired Eric Frohnhoefer, a software engineer who had been at the company for more than eight years, with a tweet. Frohnhoefer had disagreed with Musk in public about why Twitter was running slow in some countries. Musk later deleted the tweet where he said Frohnhoefer was fired, even though it had already spread far and wide by then.
Before the first round of layoffs, employees were reminding each other to keep their heads down and out of the way of Musk.
If they got laid off, they’d get severance. But if they pushed back against Elon? They’d get fired. No severance.
Very normal work environment. pic.twitter.com/o9dQAHJCPn
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) November 14, 2022
Orosz, the newsletter author, said on Wednesday that software engineers at Twitter told him they were relieved to receive Musk’s midnight email giving them the choice to leave with pay.
“Many wanted to leave and were interviewing so this makes it easy for them [to] leave,” Orosz tweeted. “For those on visas tied to employment, this won’t make it easier though.”