Hundreds of Twitter employees leave, offices shut down after Musk’s ultimatum – National

Hundreds of Twitter employees are estimated to be leaving the beleaguered social media company following an ultimatum from new owner Elon Musk.

A survey by Blind, a workplace app that lets employees use their work email addresses to identify employees and share information anonymously, found that 42% of 180 people said, “If I choose to quit, I’m free!” I chose the answer

A quarter said they chose to stay “reluctantly”, and only 7% of survey participants[はい]clicked. I’m hardcore,’ he said.

Musk has met with some top employees and tried to convince them to stay, said one current employee and a recently retired employee who keeps in touch with colleagues at Twitter.

It’s unclear how many employees have chosen to stay, but the figure reflects some reluctance to stay at a company where Musk is rushing to lay off half of the workforce, including top management. We are ruthlessly changing our culture to highlight our staff and emphasize long hours and hard work. intense pace.

The company has notified employees that it will be closing its offices and suspending access to badges until Monday, two sources said. It is said that they started kicking me out.

Twitter, which lost many members of its communications team, did not respond to a request for comment.

In a private Signal chat with about 50 Twitter staff, about 40 said they had decided to leave, according to former employees.

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Also, in a private Slack group for current and former Twitter employees, about 360 people have joined a new channel titled “Voluntary Layoffs,” said a person familiar with the Slack group.

Another poll on Blind asked employees to estimate the percentage of people leaving Twitter based on their perceptions. More than half of respondents expect at least 50% of their workforce to leave.

Blue heart and salute emojis flooded Twitter and its internal chatrooms on Thursday. This is his second time in two weeks for a Twitter employee to say goodbye.

By 6 p.m. ET, more than 20 Twitter employees in the United States and Europe announced their departures in public Twitter posts seen by Reuters, although it was not possible to individually confirm each of their departures. did.

Earlier Wednesday, Musk emailed a Twitter employee, stating:

The email asked to click “yes” if the staff wanted to stay. Those who did not respond by 5 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday were considered retired and received a severance package, the email said.

As deadlines approached, employees wondered what to do.

A team within Twitter decided to make the leap together and leave the company, a retiring employee told Reuters.

In a clear attack on Musk’s call for employees to be “hardcore,” bios on the Twitter profiles of several engineers leaving Thursday called themselves “softcore engineers” or “ex-hardcore engineers.” expressed.

(Reporting by Sheila Dang, Hyunjoo Jin and Paresh Dave; Editing by Sam Holmes)