Musk gives employees an ultimatum - overtime or termination

In the midst of a wave of layoffs, new Twitter owner Elon Musk has given his employees an ultimatum: They have until Thursday to decide whether they want to accept "long working hours with high intensity" or take a severance payment of three months' salary, he tweeted via the short message service to the employees. Anyone who has not clicked on a link confirming “that you want to be part of the new Twitter” by Thursday evening New York time is deemed to have been terminated. "Whatever decision you make, thank you for your efforts in making Twitter successful," Musk wrote.

"To build a groundbreaking Twitter 2.0 in the future and thrive in an increasingly competitive world, we must be extremely tough," the message said. “That means long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance gets a pass.” Musk also announced that under his leadership, Twitter will be “much more engineering-centric.”

A copy of the message, reported by The Washington Post, was verified by Reuters. A person who received the message on Twitter also confirmed its content. Twitter could not immediately be reached for comment.

In addition to the new working conditions, Elon Musk announced on Tuesday via Twitter that the start of the "Blue Verified" subscription model would be postponed to November 29th, and thus by two weeks. He wanted to "make sure" that the new model was "rock solid".

Musk was responding to a spate of fake profiles on Twitter after the new subscription model was rolled out to iPhones last week. The blue verification symbol, a white check mark in a blue circle, was given to anyone who paid an $8 monthly fee, and numerous fake profiles of celebrities and companies, such as basketball player LeBron James and Nintendo, began to appear. The pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, for example, had to make it clear that it would not be giving away insulin for free in the future.

Before Musk took over Twitter on October 27, personalities, official bodies or companies received the verification symbol for free after being checked by the short message service. Musk announced that he would abolish this two-tier system "of feudal lords and peasants". He also wants to make the short message service profitable.

The new subscription model was deactivated on Friday; US media quoted an internal letter as saying the launch was on hold "to solve the problems of identity theft." Musk announced on Tuesday that starting November 29, "any name change will cause the blue tick to be lost until the name is verified by Twitter." If you don't take out a subscription, you lose the hook in the following month.

Musk took over Twitter at the end of October for 44 billion dollars (around 44 billion euros) and immediately fired the top floor. A week later, he fired around half of the 7,500 employees. Several large corporations have now suspended their advertising on the network.

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