Chaos continues to reign at Twitter following Musk ultimatum, worker exodus
SAN FRANCISCO -- Twitter offices including the headquarters are expected to be closed until Monday amid more chaos and resignations over the weekend.
Justine De Caires worked for Twitter for three years before being laid off, along with nearly half the staff earlier this month.
"The culture at Twitter under Elon Musk was definitely a culture of fear, of uncertainty, of anxiety," said De Caires.
De Caires is part of a class action lawsuit against the company.
"I've seen systems start to fail already. And I expect to see bigger things to start to break, especially with all the expertise that went out the door," said De Caires. "We had thousands of engineers, and it's not like they're sitting around twiddling their thumbs."
This week, Musk gave remaining employees an ultimatum -- pledge to being "extremely hardcore," work long hours or resign by 5 p.m. Thursday.
Fed up employees went online counting down the deadline. It's been reported that as many as 1,200 workers left.
Twitter employees who rely on the company for work visas know that if they quit, they have to leave the country.
"If you are on a visa for example an H-1B visa it means you have 60 days to find another job or you must depart our country. That's a double whammy. You're not only losing your job, you're being deported," said Russell Hancock, president and CEO of Joint Venture Silicon Valley.
He said the majority of H-1B visas issued went to workers from India and China.
"While you're here for that long period of time, let's face it most people are getting very deep roots in our country and often that means entering into relationships, marriage relationships, creating families," he said.
On Saturday, after holding a poll with Twitter users, Elon Musk reinstated Donald Trump's account, reversing a ban that has kept the former president off the site since a pro-Trump mob attacked the US Capitol on January 6th.
"I hear we're getting a big vote to also go back on Twitter. I don't see it because I don't see any reason for it. They have a lot of problems at Twitter. You see what's going on. It may make it, it may not make it. But the problems are incredible. The engagements are negative. And you have a lot of bots and you have a lot of fake accounts, which I think they should get on," said Trump during a video speech to a Republican Jewish group meeting in Las Vegas.
"Part of the problem, Elon Musk has now is that he has said and done things very different, even from himself, he had initially said when he started taking over that he was going to set up a moderation council, a bunch of different voices in the room to make major decisions, including whether or not to bring back President Donald Trump," said Editor At Large at CNET Ian Sherr.