Twitter employees were told by their new boss Elon Musk this week that they had two options — commit to his “hardcore” vision for Twitter or leave the company.
The Washington Post reports that Twitter employees recently received an email from Elon Musk informing them that they had to sign a pledge in order to stay employed at the company. “If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below,” read the email to all staff, which included a link to an online form.
The message said that anyone who didn’t sign the pledge by 5:00 p.m. EST on Thursday would receive three months of severance pay and be let go. Musk said in the email that Twitter “will need to be extremely hardcore” going forward. He added: “This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”
The expectation is that Musk’s request for employees to sign this new pledge, along with a new policy mandating that workers return to the office, will result in more employees choosing to leave. While design and product management will still be important, Musk said, he plans for Twitter to be run primarily by engineers from now on. “Those writing great code will constitute the majority of our team and have the greatest sway,” he said.
Musk has also announced that he’s suspending the Twitter Blue Verified feature, his first major feature launch since the company takeover, as the company attempts to fix the system following a botched launch. Almost immediately after the debut of the feature, users began impersonating famous people and companies.
Sign-ups to the membership have been paused and Musk announced via tweet on Tuesday that the service would “relaunch” on November 29 “to make sure that it is rock solid.” But internally staff are reportedly taking time to conduct a review of the launch in an attempt to understand why the feature failed so badly.
Read more at the Wall Street Journal here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan
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