Elon Musk tells staff to commit to ‘hardcore Twitter’ or he will fire them

Midnight email warns employees of ‘long hours at high intensity’

Elon Musk has told staff they must commit to a new “hardcore” Twitter or he will fire them, according to reports.

Staff received an email at midnight local pacific time telling them that the company will become “extremely hardcore” in the future.

“This will mean working long hours at high intensity,” he said, according to a number of reports. “Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”

Staff were forced to click “yes” on a link to pledge themselves to the “new Twitter”, with a commitment required by Thursday. If they do not sign that pledge, they will be fired with three months pay, the email reportedly threatened.

Mr Musk’s time at Twitter has been marked by an increasingly oppositional approach to its existing staff. One of his first acts after buying the company was to fire half of its staff – before reportedly asking some of them to come back – and he has since dismissed a number of staff who have questioned his strategy, with one of those sackings announced on Twitter.

The new Twitter boss has also appeared to mock those sacked employees. In one tweet he wrote that “Starlink is rebuilding the Internet in space, so maybe I know slightly more than some guy who wrote code for a website”, and another seemingly sarcastically referred to them as “geniuses”.

Mr Musk’s latest email comes less than a week after another email that demanded Twitter employees come back into the office and threatened to fire those who did not.

The latest incident continues a tumultuous first few weeks in charge for Mr Musk, who has laid off half of Twitter’s workforce only to now be seeking to rehire some of them to plug staffing gaps.

The company’s attempt to introduce a new version of its Twitter Blue subscription package - giving users a verified blue tick badge if they pay £6.99 a month - has also been mired in confusion after it was launched, only to be pulled barely a day later.

New grey “Official” badges to identify authentic, verified accounts have also been rolled out, taken down and then launched again in recent days, further adding to the confusion around the platform’s future.

Mr Musk has said Twitter needs more subscriptions to boost revenue and told staff last week that the collapse of the company was not out of the question if changes were not made.

Some safety experts have raised concerns that giving a verified account badge to any account willing to pay for it will help bad actors spread misinformation.

The Twitter boss has now said the relaunch of the Blue subscription has been pushed back until the end of the month “to make sure that it is rock solid”.

Additional reporting by Press Association