Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has been shaking the birds out of the tree at Twitter. His latest move has been seen as a veiled threat to company employees.
On Nov. 16, new Twitter boss Elon Musk sent his staff an ultimatum. According to the email, employees need to be “extremely hardcore” and commit to “working long hours at high intensity.”
They don’t have long to decide and have been given until 5 pm ET on Nov. 17 to choose. Those that do not agree will be fired with three months’ severance, Musk said.
The email was shared by CNN correspondent Donie O’Sullivan.
Here’s the text of the email Musk sent to Twitter staff overnight.
Those who don’t commit to being “extremely hardcore” by 5pm ET today must leave the company. !?
Story: https://t.co/expt0d63dHpic.twitter.com/C8VDjRBvk1
— Donie O'Sullivan (@donie) November 16, 2022
Elon Musk Building 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,” the email stated.
The platform will be much more “engineering-driven,” he added, stating that Twitter was a “software and servers” company.
One of Musk’s first moves at the helm was to fire Twitter executives and its CEO at the time, Parag Agrawal. A week later, he booted the board of directors claiming sole directorship of the platform.
Another Elon Musk mission was to eliminate the and bots that plagued the platform. However, judging by the results of a recent poll, he has failed to do so as yet. Anything crypto-related on the micro-blogging platform still attracts a swarm of scams and bot posts.
Are you seeing far fewer bots/scams/spam?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 10, 2022
Despite having spent most of his time dedicated to the platform since he acquired it, Musk eventually wants to relinquish his control.
“I expect to reduce my time at Twitter, and find somebody else to run Twitter, over time,” he said this week.
He also rescheduled the launch of the paid verified blue badge after employees identified vulnerabilities in the system. On Nov. 16, Elon Musk tweeted
“Punting relaunch of Blue Verified to Nov. 29 to make sure that it is rock solid.”
Potential Impact on Crypto
Twitter’s future hangs in the balance. When Elon Musk took over, many industry observers saw it as a good thing for crypto. Furthermore, the rumors of Dogecoin payments on the platform resurfaced, pushing up DOGE prices again.
Earlier this month, BeInCrypto reported that Musk was facing some pushback over his vision for the platform. Users and journalists were particularly incensed at having to pay to be verified. Many of them pointed out that this would not solve the scourge of fake news, as anyone could buy a blue badge.
With Twitter in desperate need of income, paid verification appears to be the only way forward for its new boss.
