After Elon Musk’s ultimatum, Twitter employees begin to retire

Article content

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

Article content

In a survey conducted by Blind, a workplace app that lets employees identify themselves by their work email addresses and share information anonymously, 42% of 180 people said, “I’m free by choosing to quit!” I chose

Article content

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

Article content

Musk has been trying to convince some top employees 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 the workforce, including top management. We are ruthlessly changing our culture to highlight our staff and emphasize long hours and hard work. intense pace.

Article content

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.

The departures include many engineers responsible for fixing bugs and preventing service outages, raising questions about the stability of the platform amid the loss of employees.

A source familiar with the matter said Thursday night that the version of the Twitter app used by employees began to slow down, estimating that the public version of Twitter was at risk of failing overnight.

Article content

“If it breaks, there’s no one left to fix it in many areas,” said the person, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation.

Reports of Twitter outages surged from less than 50 to about 350 on Thursday night, according to Downdetector, a website that tracks website and app outages.

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

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.

Article content

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:

Article content

Recommended videos

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.