Twitter’s new owner and CEO, Elon Musk, has been making dramatic changes since he finalized a deal to buy the company for about $44 billion on Oct. 27. After laying off half the staff, he gave remaining employees an ultimatum this week to pledge to work under his new intense culture or get out. Many, it seems, decided to leave.
Twitter’s saga with Musk, who also runs automaker Tesla and aerospace company SpaceX, was chaotic even before he took control. He signed a deal in April to acquire the company but then attempted to back out of it, leading Twitter to sue him. After months of pretrial skirmishes, Musk closed the acquisition just before a court-ordered deadline.
Twitter users started tweeting farewell remarks as #RIPTwitter trended on the platform in the US and other parts of the world.
Fears about a potential collapse of the site came after hundreds of employees decided to leave the company earlier in the day. One former Twitter employee told The Washington Post that there’s no longer a “skeleton crew manning the system.”
Twitter “will continue to coast until it runs into something, and then it will stop,” the employee said.
Musk tweeted a meme with Twitter’s logo on a grave stone.
The remaining 3,500 or so employees who were left at Twitter after thousands were laid off had a choice to make at the end of the day on Nov. 17: Remain under Musk’s plan for an intense “Twitter 2.0” or leave with three months of severance pay.
Up to 75% of remaining employees chose the exit, according to Fortune and Bloomberg, creating confusion about how many remaining people would have access to the offices. The Verge reported that those who left included some “legendary” engineers and coders.
Around the same time, the company has apparently locked the doors to its San Francisco headquarters until Nov. 21, according to tech newsletter Platformer.
Twitter, which may no longer have public relations department, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
