Elon Musk has given Twitter's remaining staff an ultimatum: commit to working "long hours at high intensity" or leave with "three months of severance".
In an email to the social media platform's employees, obtained by The Guardian, the 51-year-old billionaire said that in order to create the platform's next steps, he requires "exceptional performance" from workers.
"Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore. This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade," Musk wrote.
The new owner also wrote in the email - with the subject heading "a fork in the road" - that staff who don't sign up to be part of "the new Twitter" by 5 PM on Thursday (November 17), will receive three months of severance. So, essentially Musk has given Twitter staff just two days to decide whether or not they want to stay at the company.
Check out Musk's email below:The Tesla founder's email, which was sent on Wednesday (November 16), outlined that the social media platform would focus on engineering, stating it was "a software and servers company".
"Design and product management will still be very important and report to me, but those writing great code will constitute the greatest majority of our team and have the greatest sway," he added.
The companywide injunction comes after the business mogul fired the network's notable executives, laid off half of the full-time employees, and cut the number of contractors working with the platform without notice.
In addition to all this, Musk also sacked veteran engineers at Twitter, after they slammed him in public, and in the company’s internal Slack channels, according to the Financial Times.
Also, it is the latest development in an explosive few weeks for the platform under the new owner's takeover, following an incompetent rollout of the premium subscription service Twitter Blue.
The controversial $7.99/month subscription plan - which offered the blue checkmark feature - was quickly manipulated by online users impersonating celebrities, politicians, and brands.
For example, an impersonator acted as the multinational drug company Eli Lilly, and tweeted: "We are excited to announce insulin is free now." The tweet remained on the social media platform for hours before it was taken down.
The real Eli Lilly account later clarified the misunderstanding and wrote on Twitter: "We apologize to those who have been served a misleading message from a fake Lilly account."
As a result of the false tweet, the pharmaceutical giant's stock price dropped sharply, and the brand has decided to suspend advertising on Twitter indefinitely, according to CNBC.
Despite the launch of fake accounts, the SpaceX owner still has plans in place to revive the platform subscription plan at the end of the month.
On November 15, the self-described "Chief Twit" wrote on his Twitter page: "Punting relaunch of Blue Verified to November 29th to make sure that it is rock solid."
Let's see if Musk is lucky the second time around with the Twitter Blue subscription plan.