Elon Musk Ultimatum: Many Twitter employees opt to leave rather than commit to “hardcore” Twitter

It would seem that many Twitter employees are opting to take severance rather commit to “hardcore” Twitter.

On Wednesday, Elon Musk issued an ultimatum to Twitter employees to sign a pledge to work harder for a new “hardcore” Twitter or leave the company with 3 months severance pay.

According to the new Twitter in an email to staff, Twitter was shifting to an engineer-driven operation — one that “will need to be extremely hardcore” going forward. Employees were asked to click an icon and respond by Thursday if they wanted to stay.

He went on to add that the new Twitter regime would mean working long hours at high intensity. “Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”

According to a Washington Post report, hundreds are said to have opted to leave Twitter over Musk ultimatum. However this mass resignation is threatening the site’s ability to keep operating and prompting hurried debates among managers over who should be asked to return.

The report stated that “In an early sign that the number of those declining to sign was greater than anticipated, Musk eased off a return-to-office mandate he had issued a week ago, telling employees Thursday they would be allowed to work remotely if their managers assert they are making an excellent contribution.”

“I know of six critical systems (like ‘serving tweets’ levels of critical) which no longer have any engineers,” a former employee said. “There is no longer even a skeleton crew manning the system. It will continue to coast until it runs into something, and then it will stop.”

Reports state that among those who were said to have declined to sign the pledge was half the trust and safety policy team, including a majority of those who work on spotting misinformation, spam, fake accounts and impersonation, according to one employee familiar with the team.

In the recent Twitter massive layoff, it was predicted that 3,700 would be affected. However employees offered varying estimates of how many people remained employed at Twitter, ranging from 2,000 to 2,500, down from the 3,500.

Meanwhile the #RIPTwitter has been trending as users wonder whether the service would go down with the resignation of the staff.

Twitter has been going through a lot of radical changes since Elon Musk took over the reigns of the social media company. Twitter does not even have a communications department anymore so there is no official statement from the company.