Elon Musk, Chief Twit at Twitter, gave his staff an ultimatum on Wednesday, saying the company had to be “extremely hardcore” going forward and that would mean “working long hours at high intensity.”.“Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade,” he said, directing staff to sign a pledge in order to keep their jobs. Those who didn’t pledge to work harder by 5 pm Thursday were told they would lose their jobs and receive three months severance pay..The New York Times reported hundreds of employees have apparently quit, the numbers gleaned from internal Twitter communications, including a poll where 42% of 180 workers surveyed said they were “Taking the exit option, I’m free.”.A quarter of employees said they were “reluctantly” choosing to stay and only 7% said they “clicked yes to stay, I’m hardcore.” .The poll appeared on the workplace app Blind, which allows verified employees to share information anonymously, reports Reuters..As the resignations rolled in, Musk quipped in a tweet: “How do you make a small fortune in social media? Start out with a large one.”.Another 40 workers, communicating in a private Signal chat, also said they were hitting the exits..And in a private Slack group for Twitter’s current and former employees, about 360 people joined a new channel titled “voluntary-layoff,” a source told Reuters..Security officers also began removing employees from the offices Thursday evening..Following the exodus, Twitter’s offices were closed until Monday and employee badge access would be cut until then..It's still unclear exactly how many workers quit, but more key engineers left than anticipated, which one employee said could cause the system to "stop" if it hits a problem, The Washington Post reported. .Musk and some of his advisers met with some "critical" employees, hoping to get them to stay, The New York Times reported, citing four people with knowledge of the discussions. .On Thursday evening, the version of the Twitter app used by employees began slowing down, according to a source familiar with the matter, who said the public version of Twitter could shut also down Thursday night..Reports of Twitter outages rose sharply from less than 50 to nearly 2,000 reports on Thursday evening, according to the website Downdetector, which tracks website and app outages..“If it does break, there is no one left to fix things in many areas,” the source, who declined to be named for fear of retribution, told Reuters..The road Musk travelled in his takeover of the company has been marred with one pothole after another as he tries to generate revenue..One was the rollout, and subsequent revocation, of the Blue Verified program, in which Twitter users were invited to pay $7.99 per month for a blue check icon next to their handles. The feature was shelved after Twitter users impersonated celebrities, brands and other high-profile figures..After the board of directors of Musk’s electric vehicle company, Tesla, questioned the amount of time Musk spent on Twitter, he announced he plans to spend less time there and will find a new leader to run the company..With all the chaos, Twitter was the No.1 trending topic on Twitter, leading Musk to tweet “And … we just hit another all-time high in Twitter usage lol,” shortly after 11 pm on Thursday.
