Mass resignations hit Twitter, Musk 'temporarily shuts' offices

In yet another mayhem at Twitter, hundreds of employees have resigned ahead of the deadline given to them by Elon Musk to either agree to his "extremely hardcore" way of work or quit the company.

Several employees took to Twitter to announce their resignations ahead of the 5 p.m. Thursday deadline (US time) to meet Musk's new work criteria.

Twitter had around 3,000 employees left after the massive layoffs when Musk sacked about half of its workforce after taking over the company.

"And just like that, after 12 years, I have left Twitter. I have nothing but love for all my fellow tweeps, past and present. A thousand faces and a thousand scenes are flashing through my mind right now - I love you Twitter and I'll forever bleed blue," posted Satanjeev Banerjee from San Francisco.

Several employees also bid farewell to Twitter in the company's internal messaging platform Slack.

"After the deadline hit, hundreds of employees quickly started posting farewell messages and saluting emojis in Twitter's Slack, announcing that they had said no to Musk's ultimatum," reports The Verge.

"I have worked here at Twitter for over 11 years. Back in July, I was the 27th most tenured employee at the company. Now I'm the 15th," posted one employee in Twitter's Slack.

"I'm not pressing the (yes) button. My watch ends with Twitter 1.0. I do not wish to be part of Twitter 2.0," another posted.

Musk, in his memo to employees, had written that "going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore".

"Guess I just said goodbye to the ghost of my dream job forever?. Tweeps, you are world-class," posted another employee who resigned.

Zoe Schiffer, Managing Editor at Platformer, tweeted that "Twitter has alerted employees that effective immediately, all office buildings are temporarily closed and badge access is suspended. No details given as to why".

"We're hearing this is because Elon Musk and his team are terrified employees are going to sabotage the company. Also, they're still trying to figure out which Twitter workers they need to cut access for," she tweeted.

Schiffer said that Twitter offices will reopen on November 21.