Elon Musk Gives Twitter Staff an Ultimatum: Work ‘Long Hours at High Intensity’ or Leave

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

The email comes after Mr. Musk last week sent employees a memo seen by the Journal that warned of “dire” economic challenges facing the company and in which he said bankruptcy is a possibility. Also last week, in the company’s first all-hands meeting since Mr. Musk’s late October takeover, the billionaire talked about ending remote work for most Twitter employees, saying they needed to come to the office if able, according to people familiar with the matter. 

Mr. Musk’s employee ultimatum was previously reported by The Washington Post.

Before the mass layoffs, Twitter had roughly 7,500 employees at the start of the year. Many of the company’s senior executives have resigned in recent days, including chief information security officer,

Lea Kissner,

who was responsible for data security, and

Yoel Roth,

head of trust and safety, the Journal previously reported. The company’s chief executive, finance chief, legal chief and others were fired by Mr. Musk immediately after he bought the company and took it private.

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at [email protected]