Elon Musk says he’s not ‘super worried’ about Twitter staffers quitting in droves because the ‘best people are staying’

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Twitter owner Elon Musk said he’s not concerned about employees exiting the company in droves because the firm has retained “the best people.” 

Musk tweeted on Thursday evening that “The best people are staying, so I’m not super worried,” in response to a tweet by Dave Portnoy, Barstool Sport’s founder. 

“What do people mean when they say Twitter is gonna shut down? Doesn’t it kinda run itself?” Portnoy wrote in the tweet. “I also don’t know anything. Hey Elon Musk wanna do a Twitter space with me? Im confused.” 

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment from Insider about Musk’s tweets. 

Musk gave Twitter staff an ultimatum on Wednesday to either sign up to stay at “Twitter 2.0” and commit to its new “extremely hardcore” culture by Thursday 5 p.m. ET, or they would be deemed to be a part of a voluntary layoff and receive three months severance. Less than 50% of the company’s roughly 4,000 remaining employees signed up to stay. 

Musk and other company leaders even called up employees who were considered “critical” to Twitter’s future to convince them to stay at the company. But instead of offering salary raises, people asked to stay were pitched Musk’s “vision” for Twitter and it’s potential.

One senior software engineer at Twitter who quit tweeted on Thursday night that “there was no vision” shared with employees and they were expected to have “blind loyalty” in Musk. 

Musk went on to tweet a series of memes joking about Twitter staffers exiting the company on Thursday night. One tweet included a picture with Twitter’s logo on a grave. 

Another post was of a picture saying “HELP US LIGMA JOHNSON YOU’RE OUR ONLY HOPE.”

The tweet was in reference to pranksters nicknamed Rahul Ligma and Daniel Johnson who had pretended to be fired from Twitter when Musk tookover. The pair later posed in a picture with Musk, who joked about welcoming the two back to the company.