- Elon Musk’s ultimatum to Twitter employees didn’t go as planned.
- Several hundred workers and entire departments resigned on Thursday.
- One department hit by a large wave of resignations is finance, including payroll.
Much of Twitter’s financial organization, including its payroll department, left the company on Thursday in response to an ultimatum from Elon Musk that apparently backfired.
Along with the payroll department’s resignation, Twitter’s U.S. tax team and its financial reporting team also resigned, two people familiar with the matter said, matching multiple internal posts seen by Insider. All three segments of the company were part of Twitter’s financial and accounting organization. While the accounting was “less impacted” by Thursday’s resignations, that part of the organization is also smaller now, one of the people said.
Employees are expected to be paid again next week, a former worker said. While those payments have likely already been approved, the next round of payments will not have been, the person said.
“What happens in two weeks?” the person asked. “When everyone who can approve of something is gone.”
“Now we will never see our money again,” said another former employee. Everyone who spoke with Insider asked not to be identified discussing sensitive topics. An email requesting comment from Twitter last night was not returned.
The loss of payroll and other finance department employees came amid a mass resignation of Twitter employees who refused to sign up to Musk’s proposed “Twitter 2.0.” In a Tuesday email, the billionaire, who took over Twitter about three weeks ago, said the platform would now be an “extremely hardcore” and forward-thinking place to work. He told the entire company to decide by Thursday at 5 p.m. ET whether they wanted to continue working on this version of Twitter. Those who did had to click on a link included in the email. Those who did not click on the link, which only had a “yes” option, would be considered to have decided to be part of a voluntary dismissal and would receive three months’ salary as severance pay, Musk said.
By the time the deadline expired, less than 50% of Twitter employees had signed up for Musk’s Twitter 2.0, as Insider reported. Musk, members of his personal transition team and some executives who remained on Twitter made personal calls and held meetings with several workers in an effort to urge them to stay with the company. While a few agreed, most disagreed.
By the end of Thursday, Twitter had several hundred additional employees and an internal Slack channel was “inundated” with greeting emojis, used by Twitter employees to say goodbye to co-workers.
Earlier this month, Musk laid off nearly 3,500 employees. Combined with Thursday’s resignations, two workers estimated there were likely fewer than 2,000 employees left at the company.
Are you a Twitter employee or someone else with ideas to share? Contact Kali Hays at khays@insider.com, on the secure messaging app Signal at 949-280-0267, or via Twitter DM at @hayskali. Reach out using a non-professional device.
Comments are closed.