Musk sent an email telling employees to expect "long hours at high intensity" if they wanted to stay.
In a new setback to Elon Musk's Twitter, hundreds of employees resigned on Thursday ahead of the deadline for the new owner's "ultimatum" to commit to a "hardcore" work environment, a report by CNBC said.
Salute emojis and farewell messages flooded the company's internal chat groups as employees including engineers announced their exit a day after Musk issued his ultimatum. As a large number of employees decided to leave, Twitter closed its offices till Monday to avoid confusion over which people still have access to the company property, according to a memo viewed by Bloomberg.
According to CNBC, it was unclear how many employees are part of the mass exodus but three Twitter employees cited fear of professional retaliation while sharing their plans to quit.
"Entire teams representing critical infrastructure are voluntarily departing the company, leaving the company at serious risk of being able to recover. We are skilled professionals with lots of options, so Elon has given us no reasons to stay and many to leave," the engineer said.
Musk had issued his now notorious ultimatum a day before the resignations rolled in on Thursday. In a companywide email, the new owner asked employees to brace for long hours at "high intensity" adding that for Twitter to succeed "we will need to be extremely hardcore."
The staff were supposed to complete the online form by the end of the day on Thursday or leave and accept three months severance.
According to the New York Times, Twitter's internal Slack messaging system showed low activity as Musk's team had spent days assessing messages or tweets that criticised him or his actions to fire about two dozen workers.
The billionaire had shared plans to fire about 3,700 people in his first week. Most of Twitter's senior management and recently, engineers who opposed his decisions have been publicly fired.
The Tesla owner has claimed that since his $44 billion buyout last month, Twitter could face bankruptcy if it doesn't start generating more cash. So far, Musk has told employees to prepare for 80-hour weeks, no free food and made several changes to the company's work-from-home policy.