Elon Musk told remaining Twitter employees he expects to hire new engineers after gutting the company’s workforce, The Verge reported on Monday. According to the people who attended and a portion of a partial tape obtained by The Verge, Musk stated that the firm is done with layoffs and now aggressively hiring for positions in engineering and sales and that staff are encouraged to make references.
On October 27, Musk closed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter and let go of almost half its 7,500 employees. Last Monday, he issued a request to the remaining employees, demanding that they pledge to “work long hours at great intensity” to maintain their employment. They were given the option to accept the request or leave the company with three months’ pay.
After Musk’s ultimatum, those people who chose to stay were reportedly let go soon after. Twitter has roughly 2,700 employees after the most recent departures. Musk issued a “dire” economic forecast warning while firing 5,000 contractors and outlawing remote work.
In yesterday’s all-hands meeting, Musk reportedly told the team that “those who are exceptional at developing software are the greatest priority” in essential hiring. Verge’s previous article states, “Twitter recruiters have already begun contacting outside developers to see if they intend to join ‘Twitter 2.0—an Elon company’.”
In his ultimatum email, Musk told the staff that Twitter would be his to own “far more focused on engineering. However, individuals who write excellent code will make up most of our staff and have the most influence. Design and product management will still be essential and report to me.”
Musk started meeting with the engineers who opted to stay after the deadline for his ultimatum passed. He said in a Friday email to his staff: “Please report to the 10th floor at 2:00 p.m. today if you build software. However, before doing so, kindly submit up to 10 screenshots of the most important lines of code, along with a bullet-point explanation of what your code commits have accomplished in the last six months.”
There were no available positions listed on the Twitter careers page today. Before Musk took control, there were more than 100 job opportunities.
Musk may need to immediately employ engineers to keep Twitter’s systems up and operating. According to a Washington Post investigation, layoffs and other employee departures “have reduced numerous important systems down to two, one or even zero engineers,” according to the former employee.
