The Twitter logo is shown outside the Twitter headquarters on October 26, 2022 in San Francisco, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
After Twitter told employees it would close its offices until Monday, new owner and CEO Elon Musk summoned engineering staff to its San Francisco headquarters office, according to internal emails obtained by CNBC.
Late Thursday, Twitter sent a company-wide email saying its offices would be closed Friday through Monday and access to badges would be cut off during that temporary closure.
Then, in two widely circulated emails sent early Friday, Musk urged “everyone who actually writes software” to report to Twitter headquarters by Friday afternoon. First, though, he asked them to send him a high-level report on the best code they’d worked on in the past six months.
After the initial call for engineers to come to the office, he also sent a follow-up message encouraging people to fly to San Francisco to present in person. He said in one of his emails that he would be working late into the night at the company office on Friday and again on Saturday morning.
Musk said the point of sharing all that code and meeting him in the office would be to do “short, technical interviews” that would help him “better understand Twitter’s technology stack.”
Musk said those authorized to work remotely can request to speak with him via video. But cheesily, he also said: “Only those who can’t make it to Twitter headquarters or have family emergencies are excused.”
The mixed messages about the return to the office come after a wave of Twitter employees resigned on Thursday.
Their new “Chief Fool,” as Musk humorously calls himself, had issued an ultimatum a day earlier, telling them they would have to commit to his vision for Twitter 2.0 and agree to work “long, high-intensity hours.” .
Three employees who resigned Thursday told CNBC they still had access to some internal Twitter systems Friday morning.
One believes that so many people on Twitter’s HR and IT teams have resigned or been laid off that it could take a long time for the company to figure out whose access to email, Slack and other systems should be turned off.
These people asked not to be named, citing fear of professional repercussions.
Here are the emails Elon Musk sent to Twitter employees early Friday (transcribed by CNBC) during the first few hours of the business day in San Francisco:
By: Elon Musk
To: Team
Subj. All software engineers
Date: November 18, 2022 [time stamp removed]
Anyone who actually writes software please report to the 10th floor at 2pm today.
Before doing so, please email me a summary of what your code has accomplished in the last 6 months, along with up to 10 screenshots of the most important lines of code.
Thanks,
Elon
By: Elon Musk
To: Team
Subj. All software engineers
Date: November 18, 2022 [time stamp removed]
If you are working remotely, please email the request below and I will try to speak with you via video. Only those who cannot physically make it to Twitter headquarters or have a family emergency are excused.
These will be short technical interviews that allow me to better understand Twitter’s technology stack.
Thanks,
Elon
By: Elon Musk
To: Team at Twitter
Subj. All software engineers
Date: November 18, 2022 [time stamp removed]
If possible I would appreciate it if you could fly to SF to attend in person. I’ll be at Twitter HQ until midnight and then again tomorrow morning.