New Twitter owner Elon Musk warned on Wednesday that all of the platform’s staff must be “extremely hardcore” or face firing.
Employees learned in a midnight email, obtained by the Washington Post, they had until Thursday to decide whether they wanted to remain with the social media company. Those interested in working on Musk’s new iteration of Twitter were instructed to click a link in the email, and those who fail to do so by the deadline would automatically be dismissed with three months of severance pay.
“Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore,” he wrote. “This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”
The 51-year-old billionaire went on to thank everyone who “helped make Twitter successful,” adding that the company would be “much more engineering-driven” and that “those writing great code will constitute the majority of our team.”
The email, paired with a new policy requiring the return to the office, comes just weeks after Musk laid off about 50% of Twitter’s 7,500 member workforce. It was one of his first major moves as head of Twitter, which he formally acquired for $44 billion on Oct. 27. The same day, Musk fired top executives including CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, legal chief Vijaya Gadde and general counsel Sean Edgett. He also removed the company’s board of directors and installed himself as the lone board member.
After the cull, the SpaceX founder defended his actions, saying he had “no choice” but to cut Twitter staff as the company is losing $4 million a day.
Musk also had to put off his Twitter Blue verification plan, another one of his first major initiatives as Twitter’s owner. He intended to charge $7.99 for any user to obtain the “verified” badge, which was expected to come with perks like priority in mentions, replies and searches. Those who bought into it also would have received half as many ads, and would be able to tweet long videos and audio.
“Punting relaunch of Blue Verified to November 29th to make sure that it is rock solid,” he tweeted Tuesday.
