By Oyintari Ben
On Friday morning, Elon Musk sent a series of pleading emails to Twitter staff members.
He said in a two-paragraph memo, seen by The New York Times, “Anyone who genuinely builds software, should go to the 10th floor at 2 p.m. today.”
About 30 minutes later, Mr. Musk sent another email inquiring about Twitter’s “tech stack,” which is a phrase for a company’s software and associated systems. Later, he requested that some individuals travel to San Francisco, where Twitter’s headquarters are located, so that they could meet in person.
Following Mr. Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter last month, the company is on the verge of collapse. The billionaire has worked tirelessly to impose his vision on the social networking platform, laying off 50% of its staff, sacking critics, exploring new subscription services, and sending a stern warning that the business must change or risk bankruptcy.
The question at hand is whether Mr. Musk, 51, has gone too far. Following a deadline set by Mr. Musk for them to decide whether to stay or leave, hundreds of Twitter employees abruptly left their positions on Thursday. When so many employees decided to go, Twitter users started to wonder if the service would survive. They tweeted their goodbyes to the platform and made hashtags like #TwitterMigration and #TwitterTakeover popular topics.
Three people with knowledge of the situation at the company estimate that at least 1,200 full-time workers left on Thursday. At the end of October, Twitter had 7,500 full-time employees; after a wave of layoffs earlier this month, that number was down to approximately 3,700.
As the dust settles on the exits, it’s possible that staff numbers will fluctuate because it’s unclear who is in charge of keeping track of employees and managing other workplace processes. Some departing workers claimed they were cutting off communication with the business by turning off their email and signing out of the Slack internal messaging platform because human services representatives were not available.
Requests for response from Mr. Musk and Twitter’s representatives were not answered.
