Musk ultimatum to remaining Twitter workers: Go ‘hardcore’ or depart

NEW YORK — Elon Musk says Twitter is a software program and servers firm at its coronary heart and has requested staff to resolve by Thursday night in the event that they wish to stay part of the enterprise, in keeping with an e-mail despatched by the corporate’s new proprietor to its remaining workers.

Musk wrote that staff “will have to be extraordinarily hardcore” to construct “a breakthrough Twitter 2.0″ and that lengthy hours at excessive depth can be wanted for achievement.

Musk, who additionally heads Tesla and SpaceX, stated Twitter can be way more engineering-driven, with staff who write “nice code” comprising nearly all of the crew.

The billionaire, who accomplished the $44 billion takeover of the San Francisco firm in late October, fired a lot of its full-time workforce by e-mail early this month and is predicted to get rid of an untold variety of contract jobs for these accountable for combating misinformation and different dangerous content material. Plenty of engineers additionally stated on Twitter they had been fired this week after saying one thing crucial of Musk, both publicly on Twitter or on an inner messaging board for Twitter staff.

Musk has vowed to ease restrictions on what customers can say on the platform. Whereas he has been criticized from nearly all sides for probably opening the gates at Twitter to hate and different dangerous speech, he has tried to reassure advertisers, which drive many of the social platform’s income, that any rule modifications is not going to harm their manufacturers by associating them with dangerous content material.

Musk has additionally indicated that he plans to renew Twitter’s premium service — which grants blue-check “verification” labels to anybody prepared to pay $8 a month – on November 29. The billionaire stated in a tweet that the relaunch would happen later this month in an effort to verify the service is “rock stable.”

Musk requested staff to click on sure on a hyperlink supplied within the e-mail in the event that they wish to be a part of the “new Twitter.” He stated that staff had till 5 p.m. Japanese on Thursday to answer to the hyperlink. Workers who do not reply by that point will obtain three months of severance, in keeping with the e-mail.

“No matter resolution you make, thanks to your efforts to make Twitter profitable,” Musk wrote.