Twitter has announced that its office buildings will be temporarily closed, effective immediately and that the offices will reopen on Monday, November 21.
Twitter employees were informed regarding the closure in a letter, but the company withheld an explanation for this.
The statement comes as there are rumours that several employees were leaving after the new owner, Elon Musk, told them to sign up for “long hours at high intensity” or quit.
Mr Musk stated that those who didn’t sign up by Thursday, November 17 would receive three months’ worth of severance money.
The corporation said earlier this month that it will be laying off almost 50 per cent of its workers.
The news that Twitter had temporarily closed its offices today coincided with indications that several employees had already left in protest at Mr Musk’s new contract terms.
To announce their departure from the company, employees have begun tweeting using the hashtag #LoveWhereYouWorked and a saluting emoji.
One former Twitter employee who wished to remain anonymous told BBC: “I think when the dust clears today, there’s probably going to be less than 2,000 people left.”
They added that everyone in their team had been terminated.
“The manager of that team, his manager was terminated. And then that manager’s manager was terminated. The person above that was one of the execs terminated on the first day. So there’s nobody left in that chain of command.”
Around 7,500 people worked for Twitter before Elon Musk took over. Thousands of contract workers were also reportedly employed by the company, the majority of whom are believed to have been let go.
Another person claimed that despite being ready to put in long hours, they had quit their job.
“I didn’t want to work for someone who threatened us over email multiple times about only ‘exceptional tweeps should work here’ when I was already working 60-70 hours weekly,” they said.
The richest person in the world acquired Twitter last month in a $44 billion deal, becoming the company’s CEO in the process.
In response to a query on worries that Twitter was set to shut down after the notification about the closure of Twitter’s offices was sent, Mr Musk tweeted: “The best people are staying, so I’m not super worried”.
