Twitter Workers Say Farewell After Musk Ultimatum

Employees began posting farewells Thursday as they opted not to sign up. Some former Twitter employees said they suspected that hundreds of staff had opted to leave the company, though the exact total wasn’t yet clear. Twitter hasn’t disclosed the scale of departures.

After the Thursday deadline passed and resignations became apparent, Twitter emailed employees saying that the company was temporarily closing its office buildings effective immediately. The offices will reopen Monday, the email said.

As the deadline approached Thursday, some employees posted farewells to the company’s internal Slack messaging platform, according to screenshots viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Some posted the “saluting face” emoji, which many employees had adopted as a symbol of the end of Twitter’s pre-Musk era following mass layoffs earlier this month.

Online, several said they were leaving after years of service and with a heavy heart. “I resigned today from my job at Twitter. I have nothing but love and admiration for the incredibly kind and talented people I have worked with over these past 4 years,” one departing employee wrote on the platform.

Amid the constant workforce upheaval, Mr. Musk and the remaining employees are working not only to keep Twitter functioning but also to engineer changes that he says will improve it. Adding to potential strain, Mr. Musk has said the usage of Twitter has increased since he completed his acquisition—“we just hit another all-time high in Twitter usage,” he tweeted Thursday night—and the company is bracing for the start on Sunday of soccer’s World Cup, which in the past has brought surges in traffic on the platform.

“The best people are staying, so I’m not super worried,” Mr. Musk tweeted late Thursday. He had earlier poked fun at concerns the platform could struggle to maintain service with employees exiting. “Don’t wanna jinx it, but there’s a chance we can keep Twitter alive …” he tweeted.

Some employees said they had doubts about whether Mr. Musk’s email offering severance would have legal force, noting that the email provided few details. Amid the uncertainty, the company later Wednesday sent around a document addressing such questions, including stating that Mr. Musk’s email was an official company communication, adding, “This is not a phishing attempt.”

“As you have seen, Twitter is at the beginning of an exciting journey,” said the document, which was viewed by the Journal. “We are asking you to confirm that you want to be part of this journey.” Mr. Musk has referred to the next phase for the company as Twitter 2.0. 

With all that ongoing, and a week after raising the specter of bankruptcy, Mr. Musk took to Twitter on Thursday to joke, “How do you make a small fortune in social media? Start out with a large one.”

Some aspects of the severance offered to the latest departures would differ by location. Employees in the U.S., except in New York City, would receive two months of nonworking time on payroll, as well as health benefits, and an additional one month of base salary, according to the document. That would generally also apply to international employees, subject to local legal requirements, the document said. 

Employees in New York City would receive three months of nonworking time on payroll and health benefits, more than other locations because of local legal requirements, the document shows. 

Some Twitter employees said they suspected that many colleagues would take Mr. Musk up on his offer to leave the company, though they weren’t sure exactly how many. Out of one group of about 60 employees, roughly 50% to 75% told colleagues they planned to depart, one person said Thursday morning.

Other employees, however, planned to stay, including for financial reasons or because they were curious about the company’s new direction, some people said. 

The ultimatum represents Mr. Musk’s latest challenge to a staff that he already cut roughly in half with mass layoffs earlier this month, about a week after he acquired Twitter for $44 billion and took it private. The company had roughly 7,500 employees at the start of the year. The layoffs also prompted a temporary office closure.

Employees also have been grappling with messages from Mr. Musk about future working conditions that some said they found confusing. Last week, Mr. Musk said he would rescind Twitter’s flexible remote-work policy, though he said there could be specific exceptions.

On Thursday, Mr. Musk told employees all that was required for approval to work remotely was that an employee’s manager takes responsibility for ensuring the person is doing excellent work, according to an email seen by the Journal. Some employees viewed that as an attempt to be conciliatory. In a further email minutes later, Mr. Musk warned that any manager who falsely claimed someone was doing excellent or essential work would be “exited from the company.”

Two engineers who opted to resign Thursday said they had grown frustrated by Mr. Musk’s style of issuing last-minute directives, such as his email to Twitter employees last week in which he ordered the end to widespread remote work on less than a day’s notice.

Twitter also has fired many contractors, including people working in engineering, marketing and customer support, people familiar with the matter have said. 

Mr. Musk has moved quickly to consolidate power, firing Twitter’s chief executive, chief financial officer and legal chief on the same late October day he bought the company. Many other executives have left since. This week, several Twitter employees said they were fired after they criticized Mr. Musk on Twitter or internally on Slack.

Shannon Liss-Riordan,

a labor lawyer in Brookline, Mass., said she received calls throughout the day Wednesday from Twitter employees seeking clarity about their rights, after Mr. Musk’s overnight email. 

Ms. Liss-Riordan has filed three lawsuits against Twitter in recent weeks on behalf of recently departed employees, accusing the company of violating federal and state law by not providing the legally required warning in advance of mass layoffs. One lawsuit is focused on full-time employees, while a second concerns contractors. In the third complaint, a former Twitter employee is accusing the company of firing disabled workers in violation of state and federal disability law. 

Some Twitter employees noted that those on visas have less flexibility. Many tech employees use H-1B specialty occupation visas, which generally allow workers 60 days after losing employment to find a new job or face leaving the country.

Laid-off Twitter employees may not have a strong case for a violation of the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Act, which requires employers to give 60 days’ advance notice before mass job cuts if the employer alternatively provides 60 days of pay and benefits, said Marc Zimmerman, a labor lawyer in New York. That is because in the ultimatum email, Mr. Musk said those who opt to leave the company would receive three months of severance.

“This is definitely Twitter’s attempt to avoid litigation,” Mr. Zimmerman said, adding that the same law exempts employers from providing notice ahead of a mass layoff in the case of unforeseeable business circumstances. Mr. Musk recently tweeted that Twitter suffered “a massive drop in revenue” after a string of advertisers began pausing their spending on the platform.

Twitter employees considering their options have also had to weigh the fact that the tech job market recently has taken a sudden and sharp turn, as other major companies also have announced mass layoffs.

Facebook

parent Meta Platforms Inc.,

Amazon.com Inc.

and

Lyft Inc.

recently made major job cuts after previously bulking up their workforces. 

Write to Alexa Corse at [email protected] and Sarah E. Needleman at [email protected]

Employees began posting farewells Thursday as they opted not to sign up. Some former Twitter employees said they suspected that hundreds of staff had opted to leave the company, though the exact total wasn’t yet clear. Twitter hasn’t disclosed the scale of departures.

After the Thursday deadline passed and resignations became apparent, Twitter emailed employees saying that the company was temporarily closing its office buildings effective immediately. The offices will reopen Monday, the email said.

As the deadline approached Thursday, some employees posted farewells to the company’s internal Slack messaging platform, according to screenshots viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Some posted the “saluting face” emoji, which many employees had adopted as a symbol of the end of Twitter’s pre-Musk era following mass layoffs earlier this month.

Online, several said they were leaving after years of service and with a heavy heart. “I resigned today from my job at Twitter. I have nothing but love and admiration for the incredibly kind and talented people I have worked with over these past 4 years,” one departing employee wrote on the platform.

Amid the constant workforce upheaval, Mr. Musk and the remaining employees are working not only to keep Twitter functioning but also to engineer changes that he says will improve it. Adding to potential strain, Mr. Musk has said the usage of Twitter has increased since he completed his acquisition—“we just hit another all-time high in Twitter usage,” he tweeted Thursday night—and the company is bracing for the start on Sunday of soccer’s World Cup, which in the past has brought surges in traffic on the platform.

“The best people are staying, so I’m not super worried,” Mr. Musk tweeted late Thursday. He had earlier poked fun at concerns the platform could struggle to maintain service with employees exiting. “Don’t wanna jinx it, but there’s a chance we can keep Twitter alive …” he tweeted.

Some employees said they had doubts about whether Mr. Musk’s email offering severance would have legal force, noting that the email provided few details. Amid the uncertainty, the company later Wednesday sent around a document addressing such questions, including stating that Mr. Musk’s email was an official company communication, adding, “This is not a phishing attempt.”

“As you have seen, Twitter is at the beginning of an exciting journey,” said the document, which was viewed by the Journal. “We are asking you to confirm that you want to be part of this journey.” Mr. Musk has referred to the next phase for the company as Twitter 2.0. 

With all that ongoing, and a week after raising the specter of bankruptcy, Mr. Musk took to Twitter on Thursday to joke, “How do you make a small fortune in social media? Start out with a large one.”

Some aspects of the severance offered to the latest departures would differ by location. Employees in the U.S., except in New York City, would receive two months of nonworking time on payroll, as well as health benefits, and an additional one month of base salary, according to the document. That would generally also apply to international employees, subject to local legal requirements, the document said. 

Employees in New York City would receive three months of nonworking time on payroll and health benefits, more than other locations because of local legal requirements, the document shows. 

Some Twitter employees said they suspected that many colleagues would take Mr. Musk up on his offer to leave the company, though they weren’t sure exactly how many. Out of one group of about 60 employees, roughly 50% to 75% told colleagues they planned to depart, one person said Thursday morning.

Other employees, however, planned to stay, including for financial reasons or because they were curious about the company’s new direction, some people said. 

The ultimatum represents Mr. Musk’s latest challenge to a staff that he already cut roughly in half with mass layoffs earlier this month, about a week after he acquired Twitter for $44 billion and took it private. The company had roughly 7,500 employees at the start of the year. The layoffs also prompted a temporary office closure.

Employees also have been grappling with messages from Mr. Musk about future working conditions that some said they found confusing. Last week, Mr. Musk said he would rescind Twitter’s flexible remote-work policy, though he said there could be specific exceptions.

On Thursday, Mr. Musk told employees all that was required for approval to work remotely was that an employee’s manager takes responsibility for ensuring the person is doing excellent work, according to an email seen by the Journal. Some employees viewed that as an attempt to be conciliatory. In a further email minutes later, Mr. Musk warned that any manager who falsely claimed someone was doing excellent or essential work would be “exited from the company.”

Two engineers who opted to resign Thursday said they had grown frustrated by Mr. Musk’s style of issuing last-minute directives, such as his email to Twitter employees last week in which he ordered the end to widespread remote work on less than a day’s notice.

Twitter also has fired many contractors, including people working in engineering, marketing and customer support, people familiar with the matter have said. 

Mr. Musk has moved quickly to consolidate power, firing Twitter’s chief executive, chief financial officer and legal chief on the same late October day he bought the company. Many other executives have left since. This week, several Twitter employees said they were fired after they criticized Mr. Musk on Twitter or internally on Slack.

Shannon Liss-Riordan,

a labor lawyer in Brookline, Mass., said she received calls throughout the day Wednesday from Twitter employees seeking clarity about their rights, after Mr. Musk’s overnight email. 

Ms. Liss-Riordan has filed three lawsuits against Twitter in recent weeks on behalf of recently departed employees, accusing the company of violating federal and state law by not providing the legally required warning in advance of mass layoffs. One lawsuit is focused on full-time employees, while a second concerns contractors. In the third complaint, a former Twitter employee is accusing the company of firing disabled workers in violation of state and federal disability law. 

Some Twitter employees noted that those on visas have less flexibility. Many tech employees use H-1B specialty occupation visas, which generally allow workers 60 days after losing employment to find a new job or face leaving the country.

Laid-off Twitter employees may not have a strong case for a violation of the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Act, which requires employers to give 60 days’ advance notice before mass job cuts if the employer alternatively provides 60 days of pay and benefits, said Marc Zimmerman, a labor lawyer in New York. That is because in the ultimatum email, Mr. Musk said those who opt to leave the company would receive three months of severance.

“This is definitely Twitter’s attempt to avoid litigation,” Mr. Zimmerman said, adding that the same law exempts employers from providing notice ahead of a mass layoff in the case of unforeseeable business circumstances. Mr. Musk recently tweeted that Twitter suffered “a massive drop in revenue” after a string of advertisers began pausing their spending on the platform.

Twitter employees considering their options have also had to weigh the fact that the tech job market recently has taken a sudden and sharp turn, as other major companies also have announced mass layoffs.

Facebook

parent Meta Platforms Inc.,

Amazon.com Inc.

and

Lyft Inc.

recently made major job cuts after previously bulking up their workforces. 

Write to Alexa Corse at [email protected] and Sarah E. Needleman at [email protected]