Musk emails remaining Twitter staff to find “anyone who actually writes software”

Musk email: “Anyone who actually writes software, please report to the 10th floor.”

Jon Brodkin – Nov 18, 2022 2:59 pm | 1.8k

After laying off half of Twitter’s employees and issuing a stay-or-leave ultimatum to the rest, Elon Musk sent an email to the remaining staff today seeking responses from “anyone who actually writes software.”

“Anyone who actually writes software, please report to the 10th floor at 2 pm today. Before doing so, please email a bullet point summary of what your code commits have achieved in the past ~6 months, along with up to 10 screenshots of the most salient lines of code,” Musk wrote in the first of three emails reportedly sent around midnight PT Friday.

Musk’s emails were published in full by Business Insider and also reported by Fortune, CNBC, and Reuters. His emails requested in-person meetings with coders despite Twitter informing staff that it was closing all office buildings and disabling employee badge access until Monday. (The Business Insider story quoted Musk as writing “code commands” instead of “code commits.” But other news stories use the “code commits” phrase, which makes more sense.)

“If you’re working remotely, please email the request below nonetheless and I will try to speak to you via video. Only those who cannot physically get to Twitter HQ or have a family emergency are excused,” Musk wrote in a second email. “These will be short, technical interviews that allow me to better understand the Twitter tech stack.”

Musk prefers that Twitter coders fly to San Francisco for the short interviews. “If possible, I would appreciate it if you could fly to SF to be present in person. I will be at Twitter HQ until midnight and then back again tomorrow morning,” he wrote in another email.

Publicly, Musk claimed to be unconcerned about the mass departures. “The best people are staying, so I’m not super worried,” Musk wrote.

Layoffs and ultimatum drastically cut staff

After buying Twitter, Musk laid off about half of the 7,500 employees. He sent an ultimatum to remaining staff earlier this week, saying they must commit to “working long hours at high intensity” in order to keep their jobs.

“lf you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below,” Musk wrote. “Anyone who has not done so by 5pm ET tomorrow (Thursday) will receive three months of severance.”

Various news reports say that hundreds of Twitter employees opted to leave the company yesterday. There are conflicting reports on whether the number of newly departed workers might have reached into four figures.

Fortune quoted a source at Twitter as saying the company’s preliminary data indicates between 1,000 and 1,200 Twitter employees did not choose to stay at the company. A Business Insider report cited a source as saying that “less than half of the company’s remaining roughly 4,000 employees chose on Thursday to stay at the company.”

A Washington Post report quoted a former employee as saying layoffs and other departures “have left multiple critical systems down to two, one or even zero engineers.”

“I know of six critical systems (like ‘serving tweets’ levels of critical) which no longer have any engineers,” the former employee said, according to the Post report. “There is no longer even a skeleton crew manning the system. It will continue to coast until it runs into something, and then it will stop.”