Elon Musk's ultimatum to Twitter employees leads to 1,200 quits

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The fallout from Elon Musk's request for Twitter staff to commit "hardcore" to making Twitter 2.0 or get out revealed that given the choice, some people would prefer to get out. Following the Tesla tycoon's statement earlier this week that staff made it clear they were all in or out (with severance pay), up to 1,200 of the remaining 3,700 workers chose to quit. /p>

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The exodus was so rapid that Musk and the remaining executives were afraid to lock down Twitter headquarters and disable security badges until November 21.

According to the New York Times, Twitter's "employee counts will likely remain fluid as dust settles on the exits, with confusion abounding about who is keeping a worker count and manages other workplace systems."

The Times also reported that some "who quit said they were parting ways with the company by signing out of emails and logging out of Slack's internal messaging system because that human resources representatives were not available."< /p>

Employees leaving en masse could easily trigger a series of cascading disasters for the social media site, typified by Thursday night's top Twitter trends, such as #TwitterMigration and #TwitterTakeover. As The Associated Press (via the L.A. Times) reported Friday night:

Three engineers who left this week told The Associated Press why they expect considerable inconvenience to Twitter's more than 230 million users now that more than two-thirds of central services engineers Twitter before Musk are apparently gone. While they don't anticipate a near-term meltdown, Twitter could get very rough around the edges, especially if Musk makes major changes without a lot of off-platform testing.

The A.P. went on to note that cybersecurity is also a growing concern. For example, an NBC report published a week ago cited fraud tracking firm Proofpoint, which "said it detected a 'noticeable' increase in scammers operating on Twitter, including a ruse designed to drain people of their savings".

For his part, Musk has tweeted about it, at times seeming to acknowledge that things aren't going well, but also taking actions that have prompted wide-ranging and often contentious discussions across the site, including an investigation he has tweeted Friday night to see if users thought he should allow former President Donald Trump back on the platform.

As of 11:00 p.m. ET on November 18, the poll was 55% in favor of returning Trump and 44% against.

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