In an email sent to all remaining Twitter employees, Elon Musk asked everyone to commit to “hardcore working hours” or accept severance.
Elon Musk is definitely not the caring type. The new boss of Twitter sent an email around midnight Pacific Time on Wednesday asking employees to choose between “hardcore working” – which means “long hours at high intensity” – or leaving the company.
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The remaining Twitter employees had until Thursday at 5 pm to respond on a Google Form.
“Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore,” Musk wrote in the email, per The Wall Street Journal. “This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.” The email was titled “A Fork in the Road,” per The New York Times. The form asked staff to click “yes” on the pledge to the “new Twitter,” and if they fail to do it by the deadline, they will be fired with three months severance pay.
Elon Mush said that engineering will be the primary focus for employees at the moment, and all design and product management will take a back seat for the time being. He expects his “restructuring” of Twitter to be finalized by the end of this week, he said during a court case regarding his compensation as chief executive of Tesla.
The email comes into an already difficult context, as the new Twitter boss recently halved the staff at Twitter, dismissed contractors, and fired employees who openly criticized him on the platform. He’s also warned that if Twitter fails to increase revenue, the social media platform could face bankruptcy.