The departures highlight the reluctance of some of Twitter’s 3,000 or so employees to remain at a company where Musk earlier fired half of the workforce including top management, and is ruthlessly changing the culture to emphasize long hours and an intense pace.

Musk took to Twitter late on Thursday and said that he was not worried about resignations as “the best people are staying.”

The billionaire owner also added: “We just hit another all-time high in Twitter usage…,” without elaborating.

Musk met some top employees on Thursday to try to convince them to stay, said one current employee and a recently departed employee who is in touch with Twitter colleagues.

The company also notified employees that it will close its offices and cut badge access until Monday, according to two sources. Security officers began kicking some employees out of one office on Thursday evening, one source said.

Over 110 Twitter employees across at least four continents had announced their decision to leave in public Twitter posts reviewed by Reuters, though each resignation could not be independently verified. About 15 employees, many in ad sales, posted their intention to stay at the company.

In Twitter’s internal chat tool, over 500 employees wrote farewell messages on Thursday, a source familiar with the notes said.

A poll on the workplace app Blind, which verifies employees through their work email addresses and allows them to share information anonymously, had showed 42% of 180 respondents opting for “Taking exit option, I’m free!”

A quarter said they had chosen to stay “reluctantly,” and only 7% of the poll participants said they “clicked yes to stay, I’m hardcore.”

The exact number of employees intending to leave the company could not be immediately established.

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.

PLATFORM STABILITY

The departures include many engineers responsible for fixing bugs and preventing service outages, raising questions about the stability of the platform amid the loss of employees.

On Thursday evening, the version of the Twitter app used by employees began slowing down, according to one source familiar with the matter, who estimated that the public version of Twitter was at risk of breaking during the night.

“If it does break, there is no one left to fix things in many areas,” the person said, who declined to be named for fear of retribution.

Reports of Twitter outages rose sharply from less than 50 to about 350 reports on Thursday evening, according to website Downdetector, which tracks website and app outages.

In a private chat on Signal with about 50 Twitter staffers, nearly 40 said they had decided to leave, according to the former employee.

And in a private Slack group for Twitter’s current and former employees, about 360 people joined a new channel titled “voluntary-layoff,” said a person with knowledge of the Slack group.

A separate poll on Blind asked staffers to estimate what percentage of people would leave Twitter based on their perception. More than half of respondents estimated at least 50% of employees would leave.

Early on Wednesday, Musk had emailed Twitter employees, saying: “Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore”.

The email asked staff to click “yes” if they wanted to stick around. Those who did not respond by 5 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday would be considered to have quit and given a severance package, the email said.

As the deadline approached, employees scrambled to figure out what to do.

One team within Twitter decided to take the leap together and leave the company, one employee who is leaving told Reuters.

Blue hearts and salute emojis flooded Twitter and its internal chatrooms on Thursday, the second time in two weeks as Twitter employees said their goodbyes.

Notable departures included Tess Rinearson, who was tasked with building a cryptocurrency team at Twitter. Rinearson tweeted the blue heart and salute emojis.

In an apparent jab at Musk’s call for employees to be “hardcore,” the Twitter profile bios of several departing engineers on Thursday described themselves as “softcore engineers” or “ex-hardcore engineers.”

As the resignations rolled in, Musk cracked a joke on Twitter.

“How do you make a small fortune in social media?” he tweeted. “Start out with a large one.”

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Chinese news outlet ETtoday recently featured the unusual story of a young woman who took to social media to complain about being humiliated by her coworkers on the happiest day of her life.

The unknown woman had reportedly been working for the same company for five years and felt that she had a good relationship with her coworkers.

She had attended the weddings of a third of her 70 colleagues, so when she decided to tie the knot, she was convinced that most of them would want to be there on her big day…

The woman was so sure of her coworkers’ support that she decided to invite all of them to the wedding, fearing that those she didn’t invite would feel left out.

It’s unclear if the guestsvwere required to notify the newlyweds of their presence at the wedding, but one thing is for sure, the bride expected them to be there.

She had six tables reserved for them, but out of the 70 seats, only one was actually occupied.

The only coworker to attend the woman’s wedding was apparently her apprentice, who probably felt obligated to be there.

The bride wrote on Weibo that she felt humiliated in front of all the guests, especially her husband’s family and that she couldn’t help but keep her head down the entire day.

After the wedding, the woman reportedly resigned, because she couldn’t keep working with the people who had humiliated her on her wedding day.

The story went viral in China, dividing netizens into two camps, one that agreed with the scorned woman and her decision to leave the company, and another that blamed her for setting her expectations too high.

In a brief statement Thursday, Lukoil said Vagit Alekperov informed the company “about his decision to resign” as a director and president of the company.

The company did not disclose the reason for Alekperov’s resignation. But the announcement comes just days after he was sanctioned by the United Kingdom and seven weeks after Lukoil (LUKOY) broke ranks with President Vladimir Putin and called for an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Reuters reported that Alekperov had decided to leave after he was sanctioned in order to protect the company’s operations, citing a source familiar with the matter.

Lukoil produces more than 2% of the world’s crude oil and employs over 100,000 people. It has operations in dozens of countries and is Russia’s second biggest oil company behind state-owned giant Rosneft.

In a statement to shareholders, staff and customers in early March, Lukoil’s board of directors said that it was “calling for the soonest termination of the armed conflict.”

“We express our sincere empathy for all victims who are affected by this tragedy. We strongly support a lasting ceasefire and a settlement of problems through serious negotiations and diplomacy,” the board added.

Alekperov is worth about $16 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Earlier this month, the United Kingdom froze his assets and banned him from entering the country.

Lukoil said Thursday that as of March 31, Alekperov owned just over 3.1% of the company’s voting stock, plus a further 5.4% via family trusts or mutual funds without voting rights.

“Therefore, Vagit Alekperov is not a controlling shareholder,” it added.

Lukoil shares listed in Moscow have lost roughly 28% of their value since the invasion. They fell more than 2% on Thursday.

The oil giant has faced calls for a boycott in the United States, where there are 230 Lukoil gasoline stations owned by American franchisees. Most of the service stations that carry the Lukoil brand are in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

According to him, the decision to quit stems from the fact that he is now closer to his maker, hence he is towing a different path.

He explained that he loves to try new things and his passion for doing music has declined over the past two years after he dropped his last single.

I am not a musician any longer. I think when I brought my first album I even thought about quitting music. I stopped most times but you will realise soon I came back to record.

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For the last two years, I haven’t released any song. I featured Yaa Pono… I doubt I will do music anymore. I am believing in God to change the story and the sequence [SIC].

The ‘Aketesia’ hitmaker, however, made it clear he wasn’t backing out because of the current competition in the music space.

I believe God is changing the story I am writing so I cannot do the same thing till I die. With me, I enjoy competition. The kind of songs Ghanaians want aren’t hard to do. Now Ghanaians don’t want quality songs.

They want senseless songs. If you listen to most of the songs, they have no sense… I am not destroying the business. They come with no sense… I am believing in God to change my sequence, I cannot be doing the same things in my lifetime, he told Abeiku Santana.

According to MzVee, born Vera Hamenoo-Kpeda, her absence from the industry was a necessary fior rejuvenation and self-actualization.

Despite being surrounded by fans who profess their love to her, the musician revealed she had to battle depression for two years which has made her shy away from everything she loved the most.

Speaking on Accra-based TV3 monitored by Adomonline.com, the musician explained that her mental disorder, which affected her gravely, reached its peak when she lost her romantic relationship because she became less sociable.

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Though I was content, I am human and have problems. You know when things happen to you personally, unfortunately, there is a spill over that affects everything. I was super depressed for two years, 2017 and [20]18 so I did pull away and it affected my relationship with people, work, family and even my [intimate] relationship, she confessed.

MzVee also revealed that her fellow female artiste, Efya, was her little hope when her back was against the rope.

Efya, whom she described as a sister, became her psychologist in her trying period because she could relate to her situation, especially being a victim herself.

She explained that despite the challenges, depression made her realize how strong and confident she could be.

The man, said to have served a jail term for the same offence, was arrested along Mokwa Road in Niger State.

Speaking to Newsmen, Umaru Shehu explained his difficulty in quitting his ‘weed’ business is due to his love for the class A drug.

“Cannabis business is in my blood, it is extremely difficult for me to stop it. When I was embarking on this trip from Lagos to Sokoto, I never knew that the operatives would arrest me in Mokwa, it is my luck,” he said without remorse.

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According to sources, he had been sentenced to a year imprisonment for carrying 64kg of dried Indian hemp some years ago.

The 31-year-old is the longest serving player in Ghana’s national team having been with the team for the last fourteen years.

However it is very clear that his influence and impact in the team is dwindling after another unimpressive performance against Congo in Kumasi and a contrast in the team while he was out in the second leg.

His team have distanced themselves with reports that he is thinking of pulling way but GHANAsoccernet.com understands that Gyan will walk away if the Black Stars are able to bring an end to their trophy drought in Cameroon where the AFCON is scheduled to be held.

He said he had to stay in public service because the National Democratic Congress (NDC) led by the late president Mills won the presidential elections that year.

Mr Mahama made the revelation when he spoke at the first official reading of his first book ‘My first Coup D’etat’ at the University of Ghana Tuesday.

There has been a rancorous debate within the opposition NDC which he led into the 2016 elections over his political future.

While Mr Mahama’s immediate family has insisted that he calls time on local politics, some leaders of the party including the National Organiser Kofi Adams, Member of Parliament for Odododiodoo, Nii Lantey Vanderpuye have dismissed the idea.

They argue that Ghana’s first one-term President is the NDC’s best bet for Election 2020.

Mr Mahama’s younger brother, Ibrahim Mahama, has said the former President’s family had been advising him not to contest the NDC primary to select a candidate for 2020, adding, “He (former President Mahama) agreed with us.”

“John has given his all in politics to the NDC and Ghana and we think it is just fair that we allow him to rest. We were very supportive and instrumental in convincing him to partner the late Prof. J.E.A. Mills.

“And when the time came for him to contest for president, we supported him and advised him to go for it…Now we have advised him not to make a comeback in 2020,” he said.

When Joy News’ Latif Iddrisu asked the former President if he has abandoned politics to concentrate on writing books, he declined to comment about his future political ambition.

The former president, however, hinted that he is working on a second book but wouldn’t tell when it would be completed.

‘My First Coup d’etat’, the former President revealed has also been published in Portuguese.

The book reading by Mr Mahama thrilled the hundreds of students, former ministers as well as members of the general public who were in attendance.

A retired police officer also showed up at the reading session with his own book, ‘Fighting Corruption’.

source: myjoyonline