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Updated November 25th, 2022 at 07:31 IST

Twitter mass exodus: Entire Brussels office quits over Musk's 'hardcore work' ultimatum

Employees decided to quit as Musk called for staff to commit to a “hardcore working culture" and put in extra effort, as well as turn in a weekly report.

Reported by: Zaini Majeed
Twitter
IMAGE: AP | Image:self
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An entire regulatory hub of Twitter's Brussels office quit their jobs on Thursday amid increasing scrutiny from and the mass exodus culture following the tech billionaire Elon Musk's takeover of the social media firm. The Brussels office of Twitter consisted of nearly six employees who were split into two batches recently after Elon Musk's reshuffling of the staff.

The said employees decided to quit as Musk called for staff to commit to a “hardcore working culture" and put in extra effort, as well as turn in a weekly report on the progress of work among other stringent work ethics. Musk, weeks ago, issued a harsh ultimatum to the Twitter employees in an internal email, demanding that if they wish to put in extra hours at work, they could choose to stay, or pack their bags and leave. 

Twitter's Brussels office is known as the key hub where European regulations are formulated for the social media company. The employees worked on the content related to the hate-speech and disinformation-related regulations and the hub was opened only recently. As the entire Twitter office of Brussels exited, the last two employees namely Julia Mozer and Dario La Nasa, senior public policy managers also left this week.

Congress lawmakers in the United States including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called out against Twitter's recent treatment of its staff. “Shout out to all the workers at Twitter. You all built a vital place for connection and deserved so much better. Millions of people appreciate the space you built and the hard work that went into it. Thank you," she wrote. “If only we had taxed the rich maybe none of this would have happened,” she wrote in a separate tweet. 

Head of Twitter's French operations quits

Earlier this week, Twitter Inc’s head of French operations Damien Veil resigned from his role as Musk fired top executives and enforced mass layoffs at the firm. “It’s over,” Viel tweeted, as he thanked his team in the farewell email that he led for nearly 7 years. "Pride, honor, and mission accomplished. Goodbye #twitterfrance. What an adventure! What a team! What encounters! Thank you all for these 7 incredible and intense years," Veil wrote on his official Twitter handle, bidding goodbye to the company.

Technologists have now been expressing concerns that the mass exodus within Twitter Inc would make the company vulnerable to technical malfunctions and glitches. The network’s staff has shrunk rapidly in a short period of time amid the layoffs and rampant resignations under new CEO Elon Musk. “It’s a pretty dark picture,” Glenn Hope, an engineer who was employed at Facebook and Instagram for several years predicted on social media. “The amount of tribal knowledge lost is simply staggering, possibly unprecedented," he noted. Chester Wisniewski, a principal research scientist at the cybersecurity company Sophos Ltd. meanwhile labelled the situation as a "nightmare scenario." 

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Published November 25th, 2022 at 07:31 IST

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