Skip to main content
Elon Musk Buys Ad Space For Himself on Twitter
Elon Musk Buys Ad Space For Himself on Twitter

Elon Musk to Twitter 2.0 Employees: Work Long Hours or You're Fired

The billionaire has already laid off half of Twitter's workforce less than a month after taking over the social network.
  • Author:
  • Publish date:

Elon Musk sends an ultimatum to Twitter employees.

Since his take over of the company, the billionaire CEO has been on a war path with his employees, switching the social media company's previous rule allowing them to work from home.

His latest demand to the employees, who are remaining after he fired 50% of them, is to ask them to work long hours.

Musk, who serves as CEO of Twitter, sent an email to all employees on Nov. 16 and told them to expect to working "long hours at high intensity” or receive "three months of severance,” if they did not consent to these conditions, or support his vision for “Twitter 2.0.”

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

"If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below," he continued. "Anyone who has not done so by 5pm ET tomorrow (Thursday) will receive three months of severance."

'I'm Working the Absolute'

The serial entrepreneur recently admitted that since taking over Twitter he hardly sleeps.

"I have too much work on my plate, that's for sure," Musk said on November 14, during an appearance at B20 Indonesia, a business conference running alongside the G20 summit in Bali. "I'm working the absolute most that I can work -- morning to night, seven days a week."

Musk also told attendees at the 29th annual Baron Investment Conference a few days earlier, that his workload has increased from 70 hours a week to 120.

"But, I think once Twitter is set on the right path, it will be much easier to manage than SpaceX or Tesla."

After Musk took the company private last month, he immediately fired the CEO, the CFO, and other high level executives. He also fired half of its staff by sending emails or revoking privileges from Slack or their laptops while contractors were laid off this week also without any notice.

His latest efforts to slash costs at the company have been widely publicized since he fired engineers who had long tenures at Twitter due to their disagreements with him either on the site or in the company's Slack channels, a messaging service used by employees.

His brash leadership style has also led to hasty decisions such as adding and pausing Twitter Blue, an $7.99 a month service for users to receive the once hailed blue check mark. But after many public companies such as pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly  (LLY) - Get Free Report were impersonated and lost millions of dollars in market capitalization overnight, several ad and media buying agencies told their clients to stop advertising on the microblogging website.

Musk said on November 15 that a revamped Twitter Blue will be launched on Nov. 29.