Tech

Elon Musk orders Twitter workers to commit ‘hardcore’ this week — or get fired

Elon Musk has reportedly given an ultimatum to workers: Commit to a “hardcore” Twitter or leave the company.

“If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below,” Musk told employees in an email that was sent to them Wednesday morning. The existence of the email was reported by the Washington Post.

Those who fail to sign the pledge by 5 p.m. Eastern time Thursday were told that they would be dismissed with three months of severance pay.

Musk told employees that Twitter “will need to be extremely hardcore” moving forward, according to the message.

“This will mean working long hours at high intensity,” he said. “Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”

The ultimatum comes as Musk — consumed with the fear that disloyal employees will sabotage the platform — reportedly has ordered senior staff at Twitter to comb through internal Slack chats to identify disloyal employees to fire, according to Insider.

Musk has laid off more than half of the company’s workforce since completing his acquisition of Twitter three weeks ago. Twitter account of Elon Musk/AFP

In response, Twitter employees are scrambling to delete Slack messages and emoji reactions that could be interpreted as critical of Musk, thus giving him a reason to fire them, according to the Platformer blog.

A Twitter employee told Insider that those who have been fired likely left unflattering messages and posts in an internal Slack channel called “Social Watercooler,” where workers often congregated online to gossip about the company.

One employee speculated that Musk read the messages in the channel and “demanded anyone even mildly critical of him be fired.”

Nick Morgan, a former software engineer at Twitter, said he was let go by the company. He assumes it was because of messages he wrote on Slack.

“I’ve heard the same thing has happened to many others now,” Morgan tweeted.

Musk has clashed publicly with Twitter engineers who were critical of him. Those engineers were promptly fired. AFP via Getty Images

Musk has fired as many as 20 software engineers and developers at Twitter after they were discovered to have criticized management.

Since assuming ownership of Twitter a few weeks ago, Musk has cleaned house, initially laying off half of the company’s staff.

The layoffs coincided with a chaotic rollout of the Blue Verified feature in which Twitter users were invited to pay $7.99 per month for a blue check icon next to their handles.

Musk, under pressure to generate revenue at the financially struggling company, was forced to shelve the feature after several Twitter users impersonated celebrities, top name brands, politicians and other high-profile figures.

One impersonated the official account of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, fraudulently claiming that the company was offering free insulin — causing the pharma giant’s stock to plummet and leading its executives to freeze their advertising on Twitter.

Musk recently completed his acquisition of Twitter for $44 billion. Getty Images

According to Platformer, some engineers who were recently fired by the company had expressed sympathy for three of their former colleagues who were dismissed after publicly criticizing Musk — Eric Frohnhoefer, Sasha Solomon and Ben Leib.

Frohnhoefer said he was fired after publicly disagreeing with Musk over Twitter’s slow performance on Android.

Solomon announced on Monday that she was let go for “s–tposting.” Leib, who is also a software engineer, was let go the same day he took to Twitter to criticize Musk for having “no idea wtf he’s talking about.”

Musk purchased Twitter with a vow to alter its content moderation policy so that it is more in line with his “free speech absolutist” ethos.