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Elon Musk Gives Twitter Employees Ultimatum


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Elon Musk gave Twitter employees an ultimatum in a midnight email.

That ultimatum?

Commit to “extremely hardcore” work or get out!

Employees unfit for the task can leave the company with severance pay.

The email outlined a “Twitter 2.0” that will be driven by engineers with “those writing great code” taking a more important role inside the company.

Twitter employees have until Thursday evening to commit to “long hours at high intensity.”

https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1592801612300718080

https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1592802917362569217

https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1592822251053027329

The Verge reported:

The email arrived barely a week after Musk’s first meeting with Twitter employees, and two weeks after he ordered mass layoffs — cutting roughly half of Twitter’s global workforce. “What works at SpaceX and Tesla is people being in the office and being hardcore,” said Musk during his first meeting with Twitter employees following the cuts.

That language was mirrored in the email to Twitter employees today, with Musk demanding that employees “will need to be extremely hardcore.” Musk has previously asked Tesla workers to “go super hardcore” to meet targets.

Musk previously pushed Twitter employees to launch a new version of Twitter Blue with paid blue check verification with a deadline that would result in firings if it wasn’t met. The new Twitter Blue, which now costs $7.99 per month and gets you a blue verified check mark, eventually launched and quickly led to impersonation and chaos on the social network.

Musk reportedly ignored Twitter’s internal warnings about his paid verification scheme, and Twitter was forced to halt new Blue enrollments after just two days due to issues that resulted in advertisers pausing campaigns. Musk now says Twitter Blue will relaunch on November 29th “to make sure that it is rock solid.”

Musk has also fired as many as 5,500 additional contract Twitter employees recently, and admitted to firing an engineer for correcting him on Twitter. Others who complained publicly also got axed, including some who reportedly complained in the company’s private Slack.

Here’s Musk’s full email to Twitter employees:

Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore. This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.

Twitter will also be much more engineering-driven. Design and product management will still be very important and report to me, but those writing great code will constitute the majority of our team and have the greatest sway. At its heart, Twitter is a software and servers company, so I think this makes sense.

If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below:

Anyone who has not done so by 5pm ET tomorrow (Thursday) will receive three months of severance.

Whatever decision you make, thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful.

Elon



 

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