Go Hardcore or Go Home • The Register

comment After a public spat and several firings, Twitter CEO Elon Musk has given his employees an ultimatum: get tough or get out of my way.

It turns out he wasn’t talking about punk rock or road building, but rather envisioning a new Twitter, the 2.0 version of the groundbreaking social media platform, which he was tasked with making “extremely hardcore.”

“This means working long hours at high intensity,” he said. “Only exceptional performance justifies a passing grade.”

But it’s ok: Employees who don’t see their future as “extremely hardcore” could decide to leave the company and collect three months’ severance pay. Those who wanted to stay were told to sign a “pledge” by 5 p.m. Eastern Time Thursday. If they didn’t sign, they were out, the letter said.

According to reports and Twitter userMusk emailed employees in the middle of the night to tell them about his vision.

Musk, who is also CEO of electric carmaker Tesla and rocket company SpaceX, previously tweeted on the social media platform about the prospect of “hardcore software engineering” once he takes over.

The expression was then mocked mercilessly by Grady Boochwho has a track record of establishing concepts in software engineering.

Since Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of the platform — a commitment he’s attempted to evade in a series of lawsuits — employees have lived tumultuous lives.

Earlier this week, he fired software engineer Eric Frohnhoefer, who had responded to Musk’s public apology for Twitter’s performance by pointing out the CEO’s apparent misunderstanding of the systems architecture.

Others followed, including the lead software engineer Yao YueSoftware Engineer Sasha Solomon and Backend Engineer Nick Morgan.

Several colleagues, former colleagues, and other professional software developers have expressed their sympathy and support on Twitter.

Musk also took to the platform to poke fun at those he’d fired over disagreements with him.

“I would like to apologize for firing these geniuses. Their immense talent will no doubt be of great use elsewhere,” he said said.

An industry source working in software development told us, “I’ve worked on high-pressure projects, and if there’s one lesson to take away from everyone, it’s that working longer hours results in negative productivity when it comes to code because you have to undo more (initially undetected) errors and do more debugging than if you made sure people are taking the breaks they need.

“I’ve personally pulled someone out of their chair and dragged them to a pub for a bite to eat and then headed home because they’d been coding all night. While I appreciate the effort, I also think you have a duty as a manager to keep your crew sane and sane – Musk obviously doesn’t see it that way.”

Claims have also surfaced that Musk is firing Employees who criticize him in the company’s Slack channels.

With comments that seem to come from a business leader one day and a lunatic high school joke the next, some might say that Twitter is starting to look like an endless reflection of the man himself and the platform is doomed to debate, to criticize, ridicule and praise his every utterance and rob the residents of their collective will to live, not to mention boarding a space rocket bound for Mars. ®