Hundreds of workers at Twitter resigned en mass Thursday afternoon ahead of a 5pm meeting called by CEO Elon Musk, raising numerous questions about the fate of the social media site.
At 10:58pm, Musk tweeted, “The best people are staying, so I’m not super worried.”
Musk completed a $44 billion buyout of Twitter on October 27. Earlier this month he had already eliminated roughly half of the company’s then 7,500-person workforce.
But the loss of so many employees raises numerous questions, including how Twitter will maintain mission-critical systems, police content, remain in compliance with regulatory agreements—and simply stay afloat under billions in debt.
“I know of six critical systems (like ‘serving tweets’ levels of critical) which no longer have any engineers,” a former employee told The Washington Post on Friday. “There is no longer even a skeleton crew manning the system. It will continue to coast until it runs into something, and then it will stop.”
Meanwhile, banks have extended $13 billion in loans to Musk to help finance his takeover of the site. They are counting on him to pay $1 billion in interest each year.
Musk does still have some ideas he hasn’t put into practice yet. For example, following up on his $7.99 per month Twitter Blue service where users pay for the site’s verification checkmark, he said a revamped version is set to be launched November 29.
“Don’t wanna jinx it, but there’s a chance we can keep Twitter alive…” he tweeted Thursday night.
