Elon Musk recently conducted a hands-on meeting informing employees that Twitter has officially kicked into hiring mode. Musk infamously laid off over 50% of the staff (a percentage that represents 7,500 employees) on taking over the social media platform. Now, these layoffs have been paused and the company is looking to hire more sales and engineering staff. The company is also putting the launch of Twitter Blue on pause until they have “high confidence of stopping impersonation”. In what sounds like an ironic request, Musk also asked the existing employees at Twitter to send in referrals. Misery, after all, loves company.
Why did Twitter fire so many employees in the first place?
According to a report by The Verge, Musk certainly fired those he deemed incompetent, many of the layoffs were also in the form of forced resignations, with language that implied that employees did have the choice to stick around. Musk sent out an ultimatum that asked employees to consent to work “long hours at high intensity,” or, simply, leave if they didn’t want to. He also shot out an email detailing the level of commitment needed to rebuild Twitter, saying “Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore”.
Employees who wanted to stick around under the new regime had to click the Yes button in the e-mail. Not doing so by 5pm EST Thursday indicated non-consent, and the pertinent employees would be laid off along with a severance package.
Did people really want to stay?
Employees at Twitter have access to a workplace app known as Blind that verifies their employment status and allows them to offer information anonymously. Reuters reported that 42% of 180 employees selected the Taking exit option, I’m free!” option on the app. A quarter of the remaining figure admitted that they were staying reluctantly, while only 7% said that they selected the “clicked yes to stay, I’m hardcore.” option in the poll.
Several disgruntled ex-employees have updated their Twitter bios with terms like “softcore engineer” and “ex-hardcore engineer” to reflect their stance on Twitter’s new workplace culture.
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