By Adedapo Adesanya
More drama continues for Twitter as the company told employees that its office buildings would be temporarily closed with immediate effect.
In a message, workers were told that the offices would reopen on Monday, November 21, while it gave no reason for the move.
The announcement comes amid reports that many staff were quitting after the new owner, Mr Elon Musk, called on them to sign up for “long hours at high intensity” or leave.
Mr Musk told Twitter employees that they had to commit to working long hours and would “need to be extremely hardcore” or leave the company.
In an email to staff, the firm’s new owner said workers should agree to the pledge if they wanted to stay.
It was disclosed that those who did not sign up by Thursday, November 17, would be given three months’ severance pay, Mr Musk said.
Earlier this month, the company said it was cutting about 50 per cent of its workforce.
Employees have been tweeting using the hashtag #LoveWhereYouWorked and a saluting emoji to show they were leaving the firm.
The departures include many engineers responsible for fixing bugs and preventing service outages, raising questions about the stability of the platform amid the loss of employees.
Hashtags like #RIPTwitter, #TwitterDown, Mastodon and Myspace were all trending on the platform after the deadline passed on Musk’s ultimatum for the remaining workforce.
Despite the turmoil at the company, Mr Musk tweeted on Friday: “And… we just hit another all-time high in Twitter usage lol.”
He also tweeted: “The best people are staying, so I’m not super worried”.
In separate posts, he tweeted a skull and crossbones emoji and a meme showing a gravestone with the Twitter logo on it.
Business Post reported recently that after many tussles, Mr Musk finally took over the social media platform.
