Latest wave of resignations hits Twitter after Musk ultimatum

A recent wave of Twitter employees resigned on Thursday after Elon Musk issued an ultimatum telling them they might must be willing to commit to a “hardcore” work environment.

Internal Slack messages shared with CNBC showed engineers and other employees posting goodbye messages to a “watercooler” chat group within the run as much as 5 p.m. ET Thursday deadline that Musk set only a day earlier. 

Lots of of salute emojis (which convey the message “thanks to your service”) streamed by, together with dozens of goodbye messages.

Three Twitter employees who spoke with CNBC asked to stay nameless, citing fear of skilled retaliation. All three were planning to resign on Thursday. It was not clear exactly what number of Twitter employees resigned. 

“The train has began in #social-watercooler” one in every of the workers said, referring to a Slack room where Twitter employees have utilized in recent weeks to notify others that they’re leaving.

Musk on Wednesday sent a companywide email telling employees to expect “long hours at high intensity” in the event that they desired to stay. He said that they had until 5 p.m. ET on Thursday to make your mind up. 

Musk followed that up on Thursday with a pair of emails that said managers must meet with employees in person once per week or at the very least monthly, and that managers may very well be fired for allowing employees to work remotely if those employees don’t prove, in his view, to be “excellent” or “exceptional.”

Musk has asked some top engineers who opted to resign to contemplate staying on, in accordance with one Twitter engineer accustomed to the situation.

The recent wave of resignations adds to what’s now a combined mass layoff and voluntary exodus from Twitter, leaving the corporate significantly smaller than when Musk first took over in late October. 

One engineer said that resignations had hit vital parts of the corporate’s engineering operation.

“Entire teams representing critical infrastructure are voluntarily departing the corporate, leaving the corporate at serious risk of with the ability to get better,” the engineer, who said they were handing of their resignation on Thursday, wrote to CNBC.

The engineer added that many leaving Twitter didn’t feel the necessity to stay, and that they only knew of two people staying, one because the corporate sponsored their U.S. visa.

“We’re expert professionals with a number of options, so Elon has given us no reasons to remain and plenty of to depart,” they wrote.

Esther Crawford, who works on early stage products at Twitter, sent a farewell message to those leaving the corporate.

“To all of the Tweeps who decided to make today your last day: thanks for being incredible teammates through the ups and downs,” she tweeted. “I can not wait to see what you do next.”