Twitter Staff Said to Exit Firm in Mass Exodus After Elon Musk’s Ultimatum

Hundreds of Twitter workers are estimated to be leaving the beleaguered social media firm following an ultimatum from new proprietor Elon Musk that staffers join “long hours at high intensity,” or depart. In a ballot on the office app Blind, which verifies workers via their work electronic mail addresses and permits them to share info anonymously, 42 % of 180 individuals selected the reply for “Taking exit option, I’m free!”

1 / 4 mentioned that they had chosen to remain “reluctantly,” and solely 7 % of the ballot members mentioned they “clicked yes to stay, I’m hardcore.”

Musk was assembly some high workers to attempt to persuade them to remain, mentioned one present worker and a not too long ago departed worker who’s in contact with Twitter colleagues.

While it’s unclear what number of workers have chosen to remain, the numbers spotlight the reluctance of some staffers to stay at an organization the place Musk has hastened to fireside half its workers together with high administration, and is ruthlessly altering the tradition to stress lengthy hours and an intense tempo.

The firm notified workers that it’s going to shut its places of work and reduce badge entry till Monday, in line with two sources. Security officers have begun kicking workers out of the workplace on Thursday night, one supply mentioned.

Twitter, which has misplaced lots of its communication crew members, didn’t reply to a request for remark.

In a personal chat on Signal with about 50 Twitter staffers, practically 40 mentioned that they had determined to depart, in line with the previous worker.

And in a personal Slack group for Twitter’s present and former workers, about 360 individuals joined a brand new channel titled “voluntary-layoff,” mentioned an individual with data of the Slack group.

A separate ballot on Blind requested staffers to estimate what share of individuals would depart Twitter based mostly on their notion. More than half of respondents estimated a minimum of 50 % of workers would depart.

Blue hearts and salute emojis flooded Twitter and its inside chatrooms on Thursday, the second time in two weeks as Twitter workers mentioned their goodbyes.

By 6 pm Eastern, over two dozen Twitter workers throughout the United States and Europe had introduced their departures in public Twitter posts reviewed by Reuters, although every resignation couldn’t be independently verified.

Early on Wednesday, Musk had emailed Twitter workers, saying: “Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore”.

The electronic mail requested employees to click on “yes” in the event that they needed to stay round. Those who didn’t reply by 5 pm Eastern time on Thursday could be thought of to have give up and given a severance package deal, the e-mail mentioned.

As the deadline approached, workers scrambled to determine what to do.

One crew inside Twitter determined to take the leap collectively and depart the corporate, one worker who’s leaving informed Reuters.

In an obvious jab at Musk’s name for workers to be “hardcore,” the Twitter profile bios of a number of departing engineers on Thursday described themselves as “softcore engineers” or “ex-hardcore engineers.”

© Thomson Reuters 2022