Elon Musk sent an email this morning around 9 AM asking “anyone who actually writes software” to meet him at Twitter at 2PM today, amid a wave of departures at the company following a Thursday deadline for employees to recommit.
According to a source at Twitter, preliminary data at the company indicates that between 1,000 and 1,200 Twitter employees opted not to click “yes,” by Thursday’s deadline, on a form that required employees to affirm their intention to keep working at Twitter. Employees who did not click yes, were effectively deemed to have resigned.
It’s unclear exactly how many employees remain at Twitter.
On Friday, Musk sent an email summoning remaining employees who “actually write software” to meet him at the Twitter headquarters.
“Before doing so, please email me a bullet point summary of what your code commits have achieved in the last ~6 months, along with up to 10 screenshots of the most salient lines of code,” Musk wrote.
About 20 minutes after his first email, Musk sent a follow-up to address remote workers. He directs them to “email the request below” and he will perform “short, technical interviews” over video. Only those who cannot physically get to Twitter HQ or “have a family emergency” are excused, Musk said.
Then, several minutes after the second email, Musk sent a third email asking employees to fly to SF to be present in person if they can.
“I will be at Twitter HQ until midnight and then back again tomorrow morning,” Musk wrote.
Roughly an hour later, Musk sent a fourth email to staff telling them “flying out to SF would be appreciated, but is not essential.”
The director of engineering sent a message to the capacity engineering team at Twitter, who are responsible for making sure everyone has enough resources for their servers to run, via Slack shortly after Musk’s correspondence to the company.
“Team – Working to get more info on Elon’s ask. Feel free to reach out if you have any [questions],” the director said. “On travel, [the VP of Engineering on Core Infrastructure]’s recommendation is to send the code snippet and bullets first. Then, decide if travel is appropriate. This is evolving, but we expect there to be some sort of method prioritize [sic] over the next hour or so.”
Around 5PM PST Musk sent out another email to all staff asking everyone to be prepared to do “brief” code reviews because he’s “walking around the office.”
Around 6PM PST Musk sent out a final email to all staff saying the top priority this week is ensuring that Twitter adequately supports the World Cup, and doing whatever it takes to make sure users have the best possible experience.
