Current Events > Elon gives ultimatum to Twitter employees: 'extremely hardcore' work or get out

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/16/tech/elon-musk-email-ultimatum-twitter/index.html

Twitters new owner Elon Musk has given employees until Thursday evening to commit to extremely hardcore work or else leave the company, according to a copy of a late-night internal email sent by the billionaire and obtained by CNN.

Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore, Musk wrote in the memo. This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.

In the memo, Musk goes on to outline how Twitter will be much more engineering-driven and then gives staff an ultimatum. If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below, directing staff to what appears to be an online form.

Musk said any employee who has not done so by 5 p.m. ET on Thursday will receive three months severance. The Washington Post was first to report the memo.

The email, with the subject line A fork in the road, comes as Musk has publicly and privately clashed with Twitter employees over his approach to running the company. It also comes after Musk pushed out Twitters top execs, eliminated the board of directors and laid off roughly half the staff, including crucial roles in the curation, wellness, public policy and other teams.

In the meantime, Musk has laid out ambitious goals for how he plans to change the platform and is pushing his staff to achieve them as he attempts to quickly bolster the companys bottom line. Musk has also reportedly made confusing asks of employees, such as requesting that they print out dozens of pages of code theyd recently written and then reversing course and telling them to shred it.

At least one Twitter employee also tweeted about sleeping on the floor at the office. Musk himself has previously said hes worked as much as 120 hours a week at times and has slept on the floor at a Tesla factory.

Inside Twitter, Musk has faced pushback and concerns from employees. In one instance, employees earlier this month presented to Musk and his team a document detailing concerns about his then-proposed plan to launch a system where users could pay to receive a verification checkmark. Musk launched the system without implementing many of the suggested safeguards, and some of the employees fears were quickly realized. Twitter paused the rollout of the system just two days after it was launched, and said Tuesday he plans to restart it later this month.

Whatever decision you make, Musk said in the memo, thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful.

how did someone this stupid get so rich

TheGoldenEel posted...

how did someone this stupid get so rich

IIRC he started with a lot of cash I think? Not sure of the details but I believe he definitely is not one of those "started tesla in a garage" people.

Wtf

I'm assuming they are all on salary? His 80 hour work week demands of workers is absurd, I bet there is a mass walkout.

such a douchbag lol

TaylorHeinicke posted...

IIRC he started with a lot of cash I think? Not sure of the details but I believe he definitely is not one of those "started tesla in a garage" people.

His father owned an Emerald mine in South Africa. Elon bought Tesla and made the actual founders call him a co-founder as part of the deal.

If you're rich you can pay people to do the actual work and take credit for it. Also, there's an endless stream of bootlickers and sycophants that help launder your image.

gotta love these priviledged assholes ordering others to work...

TaylorHeinicke posted...

IIRC he started with a lot of cash I think? Not sure of the details but I believe he definitely is not one of those "started tesla in a garage" people.

He didn't start Tesla at all he isn't the founder.

The upside of this, is that the next "...with blackjack and hookers!" twitter knockoff is going to have a huge pool of engineers available.

TaylorHeinicke posted...

IIRC he started with a lot of cash I think? Not sure of the details but I believe he definitely is not one of those "started tesla in a garage" people.

His dad was basically a billionaire.

His first company he and his brother made.

His brother also son of the same rich father.

This in no way surprises me. I have a friend who worked at Tesla for a short time. He had to take a 4 hour bus ride each way, they expected him to work 12 hours a day, as well as accomplish things remotely while taking the bus back and forth.

It did not pay enough for him to move closer...

He told me his manager straight told him cocaine at work, weed at home to survive.

My friend nearly had a nervous breakdown

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


His prank to buyout twitter became a reality and its turning out to be a monumental, financial burden lol

Every competent engineer there has basically already chose the 'get out' option.

I was working 60 to 80 hours per week at my old job. There's no way in hell I would go back to anything like that.

Kind of sounds like what a 10 year old pretending to be a CEO would say

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


He was always like this. It's just that nobody paid attention and at the time he had a lot of awesome engineers at Tesla and SpaceX likely because they were the only ones doing electric cars seriously or the only serious private space company and so those engineers were willing to overlook this crap to work on their passion.

A lot of game devs get abused in the same way.

so by exploiting and abusing others you can achieve greatness.

sounds like the world's shittiest lesson...

The atmosphere in Twitter's offices must be great at the moment. Seeing half your coworkers get kicked out, and then those remaining having to push out new features within weeks, while your new boss is publicly picking fights with his employees.

ZevLoveDOOM posted...

so by exploiting and abusing others you can achieve greatness.

sounds like the world's shittiest lesson...

The American dream

ZevLoveDOOM posted...

so by exploiting and abusing others you can achieve greatness.

sounds like the world's shittiest lesson...

Literally all the billionaires did this... not a single person has been a billionaire without workforce exploitation

The few companies I've worked for as a software engineer, I've been able to maintain a 40 hour work week with no expected overtime. And if I did worked a few hours extra a few days to meet a deadline, I just took a half day on a friday.

Elon is going to find really fast that self respecting software engineers are going to find better companies who respect their time.

Tmaster148 posted...

The few companies I've worked for as a software engineer, I've been able to maintain a 40 hour work week with no expected overtime. And if I did worked a few hours extra a few days to meet a deadline, I just took a half day on a friday.

Elon is going to find really fast that self respecting software engineers are going to find better companies who respect their time.

Yeah I have never worked a single second over 40 hours

any engineer with Twitter on their resume is going to be highly desirable basically anywhere they want to work

TheGoldenEel posted...

any engineer with Twitter on their resume is going to be highly desirable basically anywhere they want to work

the chuckle any HR manager is going to get from seeing "Twitter: [year]-2022" is going to move a resume to the top of the pile by itself.

Fuck him. I hope he loses a bunch of money.

Kind of surprised this hasn't started to tank Tesla's stock more given it's obvious he runs the companies the exact same...only difference is Tesla puts potential death machines that weigh a few thousand pounds on public roadways.

I'm starting to believe the story that he's a slave owner back in South Africa.
this is the exact mentality, they want the slaves to work more instead being more productive.

TaylorHeinicke posted...

IIRC he started with a lot of cash I think? Not sure of the details but I believe he definitely is not one of those "started tesla in a garage" people.

His family got rich on owning an emerald mine.

He got rich by selling some tech company (Zip2) that no longer exists to another tech company (Compaq) that no longer exists. Then sold another tech company (X.com) to PayPal, who was then bought out by eBay.

TheGoldenEel posted...

how did someone this stupid get so rich

By inheriting his wealth, same as Trump.

ZangsBeard posted...

This in no way surprises me. I have a friend who worked at Tesla for a short time. He had to take a 4 hour bus ride each way, they expected him to work 12 hours a day, as well as accomplish things remotely while taking the bus back and forth.

That's not Tesla specific; that's the Automotive Industry.

I really hope that results in a massive walk out, because it's only gonna get worse, hell Musk is such an asshole he'll probably start cutting salaries and benefits while still demanding the same avaliability and even higher worker output than he already is demanding.

The only future for Twitter at this rate is for it to be shut down and be forgotten in the sands of time. That's its only future.

tremain07 posted...

I really hope that results in a massive walk out, because it's only gonna get worse, hell Musk is such an asshole he'll probably start cutting salaries and benefits while still demanding the same avaliability and even higher worker output than he already is demanding.

It probably will.

Apple, Meta, Square, Microsoft, Google, and a few others are basically fighting to the death to hire ex Twitter engineers.

imagine if they all walked out thats probably what he wants tbh

ZevLoveDOOM posted...

so by exploiting and abusing others you can achieve greatness.

sounds like the world's shittiest lesson...

that's capitalism for you

Yeah i think him and his family would know a thing or two about working people like slaves

it almost feels like he's intentionally tanking Twitter. or he's just that stupid.

lol Musketeers

What did he even risk all that debt is in twitter if it dies meh

Its weird how much people pretend to care about all of this. I dont see topics about dominos getting ready for the Super Bowl. Or Walmart getting ready for Black Friday. Its strange.

I don't really care if he's trying to instill some "rise and grind " culture into working there, but I am curious. Is twitters issue really a tech issue at this point? I'd think it's more of a moderation and UX issue

gatorsPENSbucs posted...

Its weird how much people pretend to care about all of this. I dont see topics about dominos getting ready for the Super Bowl. Or Walmart getting ready for Black Friday. Its strange.

I don't think it's really that hard to understand man

"I'm rich and I work hard, so you need to work hard to keep me rich."

Giant_Aspirin posted...

it almost feels like he's intentionally tanking Twitter. or he's just that stupid.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/6/6/AAEhCpAAD40e.jpg

emblem-man posted...

I don't really care if he's trying to instill some "rise and grind " culture into working there, but I am curious. Is twitters issue really a tech issue at this point? I'd think it's more of a moderation and UX issue

Musk wants to make Twitter an "everything" platform with payments, videos, games, etc. sort of like Meta is.

how he's gonna do that with a slim engineering force full of people who hate him, idk.

FortuneCookie posted...

"I'm rich and I work hard, so you need to work hard to keep me rich."

Works so hard he somehow tweets all day long....

Hmm....

gatorsPENSbucs posted...

Its weird how much people pretend to care about all of this. I dont see topics about dominos getting ready for the Super Bowl. Or Walmart getting ready for Black Friday. Its strange.

just fyi Twitter is one of the most important platforms for news and communication in the world

WingsOfGood posted...

Works so hard he somehow tweets all day long....

Hmm....

He's the Twitter president. Tweeting is his job.

<_<

berlyman101 posted...

Musk wants to make Twitter an "everything" platform with payments, videos, games, etc. sort of like Meta is.

how he's gonna do that with a slim engineering force full of people who hate him, idk.

Ahh interesting.

Ehh, maybe he can do it. I know we all like to hate on Elon, but he has led companies that have done just that.

If they make a better product, yay. If not, it doesn't matter