Former Twitter employees counting down the seconds until they no longer work at the company on November 17, 2022.
Screengrab/Matt Miller
Elon Musk gave Twitter workers an ultimatum to stay or leave by 5 p.m. ET on Thursday.
Less than half of the company’s remaining employees accepted the offer to stay, Insider reported.
One employee posted a video of him counting down the seconds until he was set to be fired.
A Twitter employee shared a video online showing employees of the social media site who rejected an ultimatum from Elon Musk count down the seconds until they’re set to be let go on Thursday night.
Musk told Twitter staff this week that they would either commit to an “extremely hardcore” version of the company or reject it and resign, with a deadline of 5 p.m. ET on Thursday.
Less than half of the company’s remaining 4,000 employees accepted the offer to stay, Insider’s Kali Hays reported.
“30 seconds left — 35 seconds,” the employee says in the video, posted Thursday just after 5 p.m. ET.
He then pans the camera to show four other individuals huddling together in an empty office, where a “Love Where You Work” sign glows in the background.
“Everybody here, we’re all about to get fired from Twitter. I’ve been … nine years and nine months now,” the former employee says. He then asks the other former employees how long they worked at the company.
One man says they worked at Twitter for over nine years. Another said four years and two months. “Nine years and a month,” another former worker says.
“Happy New Year,” he finally ironically cheers as the deadline passes. Another employee throws his hands in the air.
“Let’s try the badges,” the employee goes on to say, apparently referring to the security badges that allow them access to the building. Twitter abruptly shut down its offices Thursday after the mass resignation.
—Matt Miller (@brainiaq2000) November 17, 2022
After Musk’s ultimatum to Twitter employees this week warning they’ll need to be willing to “long hours at a high intensity” so they could “build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0,” workers flooded the company’s Slack channels with goodbye messages.
The ultimatum and reported mass exodus left shockwaves throughout the social media site late Thursday night, as users flocked to send “last tweets” and farewell notes.