Elon Musk tells staff 'be hardcore or quit'

Elon Musk has told staff they have to commit to being “extremely hardcore” or leave the embattled social media platform as reports emerged the billionaire is monitoring the internal communications of employees. 

Elon Musk has told staff they have to commit to being “extremely hardcore” or leave the embattled social media platform as reports emerged the billionaire is monitoring the internal communications of employees. 

Elon Musk has told staff they have to commit to being “extremely hardcore” or leave the embattled social media platform as reports emerged the billionaire is monitoring the internal communications of employees. 

Mr Musk, who purchased Twitter for US$44bn in April, told employees in an email with the subject line “A fork in the road” that they must indicate on a Google form whether they agree to the new regimen by 5pm Thursday. 

“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 the email that was sent over night and viewed in the morning by most employees. 

“This will mean working long hours at high intensity. 

“Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”

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/expt0d63dH pic.twitter.com/C8VDjRBvk1

— Donie O'Sullivan (@donie) November 16, 2022

Mr Musk said Twitter would become more “engineering-driven” and “those writing great code will constitute the majority of our team and have the greatest sway”. 

"At its heart, Twitter is a software and servers company, so I think this makes sense." 

Employees that elected not to be part of Mr Musk’s Twitter regimen will receive three months of severance, Mr Musk said in the email.

The email, which was sent overnight and reportedly read by most employees in the morning, is the latest managerial shake up by Musk who has already sacked about half of Twitter’s staff. 

Important to admit when I’m wrong & firing them was truly one of my biggest mistakes

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 15, 2022

Musk has also been monitoring staff communication on social media and the messaging application Slack and firing employees who criticise and mock him, the New York Times reports. 

The NYT reports Musk has dedicated an entire team to combing through the private messages of Twitter employees. 

Musk is currently defending himself in court over a US$55bn pay package he received from Tesla in 2018. 

Testifying before US court, Mr Musk said he would someone else to run Twitter over time.