Is Twitter dead? More workers flee after Musk’s ultimatum

SAN FRANCISCO – Twitter Engineers and other workers continued to bleed Thursday, according to new owner Elon Musk gave them the choice to commit to “hardcore” work or quit with severance pay.

Some took to Twitter to announce they would be unsubscribing after Musk’s deadline to make the promise. A number of employees went to a private forum outside of the company’s news forum to discuss their planned departure and ask questions about how it might jeopardize their U.S. visas or whether they would receive the promised severance pay, according to an earlier this week Fired employee spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

While it is not clear how many from Twitter already depleted staff Musk accepted his offer, the latest round of departures means the platform continues to shed employees as it prepares for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. one of the busiest events on Twitter that can overwhelm its systems when things go haywire.

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“To all the tweeps who decided to make today their last day: thank you for being incredible teammates through the ups and downs. Can’t wait to see what you do next,” tweeted one employee, Esther Crawford, who remains at the company and has been working on overhauling the platform’s verification system.

Since acquiring Twitter less than three weeks ago, Musk has laid off half of the company’s 7,500 full-time employees an untold number of contractors responsible for content moderation and other important tasks. He fired top executives on his first day as Twitter owner, while others voluntarily left in the days that followed. Earlier this week, he began firing a small group of engineers who got into trouble with him publicly or on the company’s Slack messaging system.

Then overnight on Wednesday, Musk sent an email to the remaining staff on Twitter and said that it is essentially a software and server company, and he asked employees to decide by Thursday evening whether they want to remain part of the company.

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Musk wrote that to build “a breakthrough Twitter 2.0” employees will need “extreme tenacity” and that it will take long hours of high intensity to succeed.

But in an email Thursday, Musk backtracked when he insisted everyone work from the office. His initial reluctance to work remotely had alienated many employees who survived the layoffs.

In an email to employees, he softened his earlier tone, writing that “approval simply requires your manager to take responsibility for you making an excellent contribution.” Workers are also expected to “Have face-to-face meetings with your colleagues at a reasonable frequency, ideally weekly but no less than once a month.”

As of 7 p.m. Pacific Time, the #1 trending topic in the United States was “RIPstorm‘ followed by the names of other social media platforms: ‘Tumblr’, ‘Mastodon’ and ‘MySpace’.

Twitter didn’t respond to a message asking for comment.