Hundreds of Twitter employees have reportedly left the company, leading to the temporary closing of its offices.

Hundreds of Twitter employees have reportedly left the company, leading to the temporary closing of its offices. This comes after Twitter owner Elon Musk gave employees an ultimatum earlier this week to commit to working “long hours at high intensity” and being “extremely hardcore”, or else leave with three months worth of severance pay. Many employees have reportedly rejected this offer and the company has seen a wave of resignations. The company notified employees that it will close its offices and cut badge access until Monday.

In an email to employees, reports the Guardian who have seen the letter, Musk wrote: “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.” The message asked staff to click on a link if they want to remain as part of the “new Twitter” by 5pm New York time on Thursday. Anyone who did not affirm by the deadline would receive three months of severance pay. “Whatever decision you make, thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful,” Musk added.

The ultimatum follows the firing of 50% of the workforce when Musk initially took over. He also reportedly laid off more than 4,000 contractors, including Twitter’s members of Twitter’s moderation team. The departures after Musk’s ultimatum include engineers responsible for fixing bugs and preventing service outages, raising concerns about whether the platform can even keep running - hashtags such as #RIPTwitter have been trending. According to Downdetector, a website that monitors outages of various platforms and companies, Twitter peaked at 189 reports of outages in the last 24 hours. 48% of which were from the app, 44% from the website, and 8% from the login.

The number of departures is allegedly much higher than Musk anticipated. Despite that, Musk took to Twitter to say that he was not worried about it because “the best people are staying.” He also added that Twitter has “hit another all time high” in usage, with no further specifics, plus a series of memes seemingly poking fun at Twitter's potential demise. Yet, he met some top employees on Thursday to try to convince them to stay, according to current and former employees. According to Reuters, over 100 employees publicly announced their decision to leave via Twitter posts (however each resignation could not be independently verified). Around 15 employees posted their intention to stay.

According to a poll on workplace app Blind, which verifies employees by their work email address and allows them to anonymously share information, 42% of 180 respondents opted for “taking the exit option, I’m free!” A quarter said they chose to stay “reluctantly” and only 7% said they “clicked yes to stay, I’m hardcore.”

Will there be a Twitter 2.0?

Musk has spoken of plans for “Twitter 2.0”. But since his takeover of the social media platform, there’s been numerous changes and then retreats, indicating Musk’s vision is not matching up with the reality of it all. For example, he launched Twitter Blue, an $8 a month subscription option for users to access premium features. This meant that anyone could have a blue check mark, indicating they are a Twitter Blue member. The blue tick was formerly reserved for verified accounts of companies or individuals who are public figures and need to be indicated as legitimate. Musk then halted Twitter Blue as inevitably, people created fake accounts imitating companies or famous individuals. Most notable was a fake account (but with a blue checkmark) of Eli Lilly, an American pharmaceutical company, which tweeted “We are excited to announce insulin is free now,” garnering over 1,500 retweets and 10,000 likes before being taken down. The stock price of the pharmaceutical company sank from $368 a share to $346 a share because of it, reportedly erasing billions in market cap. 

He also rolled out and then rolled back the "Offical" sign under accounts which are verified to be legitimate public figures or companies. But this has now been reinstated as some accounts do have the grey "offical" tag under their names. Just last week he had mandated that Twitter employees had to be in the office for a minimum of 40 hours a week in an attempt to overhaul the previously more relaxed hybrid or home working policy. But then Musk went back on this too, emailing staff that they could work remotely on the condition that they perform highly and had their manager’s sign off. Some speculate this backtrack was because of the threat of people resigning. 

So with offices reportedly closed, employees leaving in greater numbers than expected, companies pausing advertising and the rollback of Musk’s features and policies, it’s been a rocky few weeks for Twitter. As such a popular platform it is unlikely to shut down entirely, but Musk did also warn employees that bankruptcy was not out of the question. He has also faced calls for regulation. A group of US Democratic senators urged the FTC to investigate Twitter over concerns that Musk’s shake up of the company has “undermined the integrity and safety of the platform”. In the letter, addressed to FTC chair Lina Khan, senators cited the heavy job cuts and reports that Musk has scaled back internal privacy reviews. Elizabeth Warren, Richard Blumenthal, Edward Markey and Cory Booker were all signatories. 

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), Twitter’s European privacy watchdog, has also said it is closely monitoring the situation. The DPC has met representatives from Twitter about concerns over the departures of senior staff and executives from the company. Among those reported to have left is Twitter’s Chief Privacy and Data Protection Officer, Damien Kieran. Under data protection regulations, Twitter is 'main established' in Ireland, meaning decisions about the processing of EU users' personal data are made there.  

(Sources: Reuters, The Guardian, Downdetector, Gizmodo, The Financial Times, RTE)