Either accept leonine conditions or leave. Those are the only two options that Elon Musk has given to the workers who are still on Twitter and who this morning received a new email from their new boss announcing the changes that are coming in their working hours. Under the subject “a fork in the road”, the tycoon gives an ultimatum to his employees with an expiration time. They must answer that they accept before five o’clock this afternoon or they will be automatically fired, with severance pay.
The news was given in the first place, and precisely through Twitter, by the technology journalist Gergely Orosz, who shared some of the details of that email. “Scoop,” he warned in the first post of a lengthy thread, “Elon Musk just sent an email to all staff describing ‘Twitter 2.0,’ writing that ‘it will have to be extremely tough.’ Long days, high intensity”
In that email, which he did not share at the request of his sources for fear that there would be different versions and they could identify who had leaked it, he explained to his recipients that they had two options. One was to click ‘yes’ and accept the working conditions proposed by Musk. The other, not to do it and automatically receive, once the five o’clock deadline expires, three months of compensation.
Orosz’s opinion as an expert on the subject “is that, given everything he has been going through with Twitter, this is a positive step.” And in the thread he explains why: “It doesn’t sugarcoat what kind of culture to expect: people already took a look anyway. It also offers an easy way out for anyone on the fence, with a decent severance package.”
In fact, he openly acknowledges that the software engineers he is in contact with were “happy/relieved” with this message as “many wanted to leave and were doing interviews, so this makes it easier for them to leave.” Of course, as this specialized journalist warns, it will be necessary to see how Musk’s ultimatum marries with labor legislation outside the United States.
On CNN, where they have published a screenshot of the email sent by the CEO of Tesla at dawn, they collect that in this you can read that “in the future, to build an advance in Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world , we will need to be extremely tough. This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”
In it, Musk also comments that the Twitter model he wants to build will be “much more engineering-driven.” And with the workers warned that more hard work, long hours and a lot of intensity will be required of them, he tells them that “if you are sure you want to be part of the new Twitter, click ‘Yes’ on the link below.”