The social network Twitter has closed its offices on Thursday after hundreds of employees opted to leave the company by refusing to work longer hours under the threat of dismissal by tycoon Elon Musk, who bought the platform in late October.
The company has taken the decision due to fears that some workers «could sabotage the social network,» asking employees who were present to leave the offices until next Monday, November 21, CNN has reported.
In addition to the closure of its headquarters, Twitter has closed access to internal communication tools and company devices in the hands of workers, as it did a few weeks ago by dismissing 50 percent of the workforce.
This intense resignation of workers comes after billionaire Elon Musk made them an ultimatum to commit to working «extremely hard» at the company or leave, urging them to make a decision by 5 p.m. (local time) this Thursday.
By that time, hundreds of workers had said their goodbyes via Twitter’s internal communication tools, accepting Musk’s offer of three months’ pay if they opted to leave their positions, according to the aforementioned network.
In view of this situation, there has been growing fear among users of the social network that it will finally close, as some of the company’s former employees have predicted, stating that there is no minimum number of engineers in charge of any of the critical systems, which could cause the platform to stop working at some point.
One of the employees who has decided to reject Musk’s ultimatum has detailed to CNN his reasons for preferring to stop working at the company, assuring that he does not want to stay to build «a product that is being poisoned inside and out».
«People don’t want to sacrifice their mental health and family life to make the richest man in the world richer,» said another employee, consulted by CNN.