In an email sent at midnight, Elon Musk gave Twitter employees a choice: commit to a “hardcore” culture at Twitter or leave with severance pay. The Washington Post says that Musk has asked Twitter employees to sign an online form by Thursday at 5 p.m. ET committing to “long hours at high intensity.” If Twitter employees don’t sign the form, they will get three months of severance pay, according to reports.
Former Uber engineer Gergely Orosz, who has been writing about Twitter’s internal changes this week, says that Musk’s email describes a “Twitter 2.0” that will be driven by engineers, with “those writing great code” taking on a more important role inside the company.
The email came just a week after Musk’s first meeting with Twitter employees and two weeks after he ordered mass layoffs, which cut about half of Twitter’s global workforce. Musk said at his first meeting with Twitter employees after the layoffs, “What works at SpaceX and Tesla is people being in the office and being hardcore.”
This language was also used in an email Musk sent to Twitter employees today. He told them they “will need to be extremely hardcore.” Musk has asked Tesla employees to “go super hardcore” in the past to meet goals.
Here is the whole email Musk sent to Twitter employees:
Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore. This will mean working long hours at high intensity. 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.
If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below:
Anyone who has not done so by 5pm ET tomorrow (Thursday) will receive three months of severance.
Whatever decision you make, thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful.
Elon
Musk once told Twitter employees that if they didn’t launch a new version of Twitter Blue with paid blue check verification by a certain date, they would be fired. The new Twitter Blue, which costs $7.99 a month and gives you a blue “verified” check mark, eventually came out, and it quickly led to impersonation and chaos on the social network.
Musk is said to have ignored Twitter’s internal warnings about his paid verification scheme, and after just two days, Twitter had to stop new Blue enrollments because problems caused advertisers to pause their campaigns. Musk now says that Twitter Blue will be relaunched on November 29 “to make sure it is rock solid.”
Musk has also recently fired up to 5,500 more contract Twitter employees and admitted that he fired an engineer for telling him he was wrong on Twitter. Some people who reportedly complained in the company’s private Slack were also let go after making public complaints.
