Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk has said that he is “not super worried” about the future of the social media giant as “the best people are staying” after hundreds of employees appeared to have left the company following a deadline by him that they commit to what he has dubbed a “hardcore Twitter 2.0” or quit.
Twitter fell into pitless chaos after several employees appeared to have departed the company, which sent messages that it was closing its “office buildings” for the next few days.
“The best people are staying, so I’m not super worried,” Musk tweeted in a response to a tweet by a user who said: “What do people mean when they say Twitter is gonna shut down? Doesn’t it kinda run itself ? I feel like engineers are for changes not to just keep it running. I also don’t know anything. Hey, @elonmusk wanna do a Twitter space with me? I’m confused.”
In another tweet, Musk, the world’s richest person, said: “And … we just hit another all-time high in Twitter usage lol. Let that sink in …”
The New York Times said in a report that after a 5 pm Thursday deadline was given by Musk to employees to choose whether to quit or stay on at Twitter, “hundreds of Twitter employees appeared to have decided to depart with three months of severance pay”. Twitter also announced through email that it would close “our office buildings” and disable employee badge access until Monday.
During all this, Musk and his advisers also held meetings with some Twitter workers deemed “critical” and to stop them from leaving the company. The chaos also included confusing messages from Musk about the company’s remote work policy.
Musk’s team also held meetings with “undecided employees” who are considered key to Twitter’s operations in a bid to try to persuade them to stay.
“In his pitch, Musk said that he knew how to win and that those who wanted to win should join him,” the NYT report said.
“In one of those meetings, some employees were summoned to a conference room in the San Francisco office while others were called in via video conference. As the 5 pm deadline passed, some who had called in began hanging up, seemingly having decided to leave, even as Musk continued speaking,” it added.
