Twitter quitters: After Musk’s ‘hardcore’ ultimatum, resignations roll in

Twitter, which has lost many of its communication team members, did not respond to a request for comment.

In a private chat on Signal with about 50 Twitter staffers, nearly 40 said they had decided to leave, according to the former employee.

And in a private Slack group for Twitter’s current and former employees, about 360 people joined a new channel titled “voluntary-layoff”, said a person with knowledge of the Slack group.

In an apparent jab at Musk’s call for employees to be ‘hardcore’, the Twitter profile bios of several departing engineers on Thursday described themselves as ‘softcore engineers’ or ‘ex-hardcore engineers’.

A separate poll on Blind asked staffers to estimate what percentage of people would leave Twitter based on their perception. More than half of respondents estimated at least 50 per cent of employees would leave.

Blue hearts and salute emojis flooded Twitter and its internal chatrooms on Thursday, the second time in two weeks as Twitter employees said their goodbyes.

By 6pm EST, more than two dozen Twitter employees across the US and Europe had announced their departures in public Twitter posts reviewed by Reuters, though each resignation could not be independently verified.

Loading

Early on Wednesday, Musk had emailed Twitter employees, saying: “Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore”.

The email asked staff to click “yes” if they wanted to stick around. Those who did not respond by 5pm EST on Thursday would be considered to have quit and given a severance package, the email said.

As the deadline approached, employees scrambled to figure out what to do.

One team within Twitter decided to take the leap together and leave the company, one employee who is leaving told Reuters.

In an apparent jab at Musk’s call for employees to be “hardcore”, the Twitter profile bios of several departing engineers on Thursday described themselves as “softcore engineers” or “ex-hardcore engineers”.

The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.

Reuters, with The New York Times