Twitter Closes All Office Buildings, Disables Badge Access Amid Mass Resignation Following Elon Musk’s Ultimatum
Twitter offices are being shut down, with employees' badge access disabled after workers filed mass resignations following an ultimatum from its new CEO, Elon Musk.
On Wednesday, Musk asked Twitter employees to either commit to an "extremely hardcore" culture at the company involving "long hours at high intensity" or leave with severance.
Rolling Stone reported that any Twitter employees who did not sign the pledge would receive three months of severance pay. The employees were given until Thursday to decide.
Musk and his advisers held meetings with "critical" Twitter employees before the deadline to convince them not to leave. However, the New York Times reported that hundreds of resignations rolled in hours before the deadline.
The mass resignation was among the recent problems the company has faced since Musk procured Twitter for $44 billion. Musk has already fired some Twitter's top executives and the staff who crossed him and reduced half of the workforce.
Twitter later announced via email that their office buildings will be closed and the employee badge access will be disabled until November 21, without citing any reasons behind the move.
But according to CNN, the company similarly closed down their offices during the mass layoffs earlier this month due to safety concerns and an apparent fear that exiting personnel could attempt to sabotage the firm on their way out.
Twitter Employees' Mass Resignation
Hundreds of Twitter employees appeared to have decided to leave with three months of severance pay. Elon Musk earlier said the "extremely hardcore" change will be a way to make the company the most competitive it could be.
However, according to The New York Times, this action would also lead to an opportunity to further cut costs and remove the disaffected workers. The mass resignation has raised questions regarding how Twitter will keep operating effectively.
Five people reportedly said that Musk has brought in some engineers and managers from his other companies, such as Tesla, with many of them just coming up to speed on how the social media platform works.
Musk and Twitter, which no longer had a communications department, have yet to comment on the matter. However, Musk joked about his procurement of the social media company shortly after news of the latest mass resignation.
"How do you make a small fortune in social media? Start out with a large one," Musk tweeted.
Aside from the internal strife in the company, Democratic Senators also called for the Federal Trade Commission to probe whether the company had violated a consumer privacy agreement since Elon Musk took control of Twitter.
Elon Musk's Twitter Takeover
After Elon Musk decided to fire a significant number of the staff maintaining the code base of Twitter, the remaining engineers have largely been tasked with keeping the site stable.
According to MIT Techology Review, the remaining employees' big chunk of time will be spent addressing Musk's decisions to introduce new products and features, instead of keeping what is already running.
Ben Krueger, a site reliability engineer, noted that the collapse of Twitter will happen gradually. Krueger said Twitter will not blink out of life, but people will start to see a greater number of tweets not loading and the accounts coming into and out of existence at a whim.
Krueger added that the many workers leaving Twitter have been in the company for nine to 11 years.
READ MORE: Elon Musk Warns World: Global Recession Could Last 'Until Spring '24'
This article is owned by Latin Post.
Written by: Mary Webber
WATCH: Elon Musk Gives Ultimatum for Twitter Employees - From Good Morning America