In an email obtained by US media on Wednesday, Twitter CEO Elon Musk warned employees to either commit themselves to working harder and longer than before, or to take a severance package and leave the company.
The email, reportedly sent early Wednesday morning, tells Twitter employees that Musk’s vision for what he calls “Twitter 2.0,” they will have to “be extremely hardcore.”
“This will mean working long hours at high intensity,” Musk said. “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,” Musk continued.
“If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below,” the email said. “Anyone who has not done so by 5pm ET tomorrow (Thursday) will receive three months of severance.”
The move is just the latest in Musk’s colossal shakeup at Twitter since finalizing his purchase of the social media giant late last month. He has already fired thousands of staff, including longtime employees responsible for vital parts of the website, and told even more to quit if they don’t want to comply with his ordering all workers back to the San Francisco office.
On Tuesday, Musk announced another of his proposed changes, ending the verification of accounts not paying for a Twitter Blue subscription, would soon resume after being paused earlier this month. Verification was previously used to combat impersonation of public figures such as celebrities, politicians and journalists, but after Musk announced the switch, it triggered a wave of impersonator accounts that wreaked havoc on the stock market.
Musk’s mass employee cull at Twitter comes as other tech giants are also laying off large numbers of staff, including at Meta* and Amazon. In commodity sectors and industries like petroleum, profits have soared amid a stagnating economy, helping to drive inflation, but corporate stocks have struggled over the past year as inflation, efforts to combat it, the conflict in Ukraine, and COVID-19 lockdowns in China have all created market instabilities.
*Meta (Facebook and Instagram) is banned in Russia over extremist activity.