Twitter CEO Elon Musk, or “Chief Twit” as he now calls himself, informed staff in an email that the company’s remote work policy would officially be banned unless otherwise approved on a case-by-case basis by Musk himself.
Wednesday’s message to Twitter’s remaining employees carried Musk’s signature managerial austerity as he prepared staff for the “difficult times ahead” in his pursuit of changing the company’s previous work culture.
Twitter employees will now be required to work in the office for a standard 40-hour work week, said the email reviewed by Bloomberg News.
Under the previous policy, Twitter employees were free to work wherever they saw fit. However, Musk has said he strongly opposes remote work and told Twitter employees as much shortly after announcing he would buy the company.
Musk also cautioned Twitter’s staff that the grim economic outlook could dramatically impact the company’s advertising-dependent business model.
Musk has made several sweeping changes since taking Twitter private for $54.20 per share roughly two weeks ago. One of his first moves as CEO was to dismiss about half the company’s workforce and almost all of its C-suite executives.
The most significant change to Twitter has been the introduction of a new service called “Twitter Blue.” Twitter Blue is a $7.99 opt-in, premium subscription service that adds a blue checkmark to a user’s account and includes early access to select new features, like Edit Tweet, which enables users to make changes to a tweet within the first half hour after posting it. Edited tweets will be marked with a new ‘Edited’ icon to alert all users that the original tweet has been changed.
In his message to staff, Musk reinforced the idea that Twitter would change for the better. However, to achieve this, Musk first wants to see Twitter Blue subscriptions account for half of the company’s revenue.
“The road ahead is arduous and will require intense work to succeed,” Musk explained.
In addition to eliminating the previous work-from-anywhere policy, Musk also removed Twitter’s “days of rest,” a paid-time-off initiative that began during the pandemic, from its staff calendar.
In a previous email to staff, Musk identified that his top priority was to purge the platform of any problematic accounts. “Over the next few days, the absolute top priority is finding and suspending any verified bots/trolls/spam,” Musk said.
