Elon Musk has sent an email to Twitter employees asking them to commit to staying with the company and working “long hours and at high intensity” during the restructuring, or accept a severance package.
Employees must complete the online form by Thursday, 5 p.m. New York time, or accept a three-month severance package. “For Twitter to be successful, we have to be extremely hardcore,” Musk said in the email, which the news service provided Bloomberg could see. In the original: “We will need to be extremely hardcore.” Only an “extraordinary performance” will be the measure for passing, the e-mail continues. A Twitter representative has not yet responded to a request for comment.
The form Musk had employees fill out following the email contained a single question: “Would you like to stay on Twitter?” “Yes” was the only clickable option before “Submit” came up. Many employees then turned to lawyers to get advice on how to react, according to informed circles.
“It’s certainly wrong that he’s asking them to sign this because it might make it seem like that obligation could override other rights they might have,” said Peter Romer-Friedman, who works in the civil rights practice and class action lawsuits at the law firm of Gupta Wessler PLLC.
Restructuring is expected to be completed by the end of next week
Musk went on to explain that going forward, Twitter will be more dominated by engineers, who make up the majority of the remaining employees at what he described as a “software and server company.” However, design and product management functions will “continue to be very important and will report to me”. Musk also said in Delaware on Wednesday that he has spent most of his time on the social media platform over the past few weeks, but also stated that the “major organizational restructuring” should be completed by the end of next week.