Commit 'hardcore' or leave, Elon Musk tells Twitter employees

Twitter employees have till Thursday evening to commit to being "extremely hardcore" or accept three months of severance upon their exiting the company, Twitter's new owner Elon Musk wrote in a company-wide email. The internal email sent out this morning was obtained by ABC News and first reported by Platformer.

With the subject line "A Fork in the Road," Musk wrote: "Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore."

"This will mean working long hours at high intensity," he added. "Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade."

For those who wish to be part of the "new Twitter," Musk directs employees to "click yes" on a forms link embodied in the email.

"Anyone who has not done so by 5pm ET tomorrow (Thursday) will receive three months of severance," Musk wrote. "Whatever decision you make, thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful."

Twitter will from now on be more "engineering-driven," he wrote -- with less focus on design and product management.

"Design and product management will still be very important and report to me, but those writing great code will constitute the majority of our team and have the greatest sway," Musk wrote. "At its heart, Twitter is a software and servers company, so I think this makes sense."

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.

On Tuesday, Twitter fired "dozens" of employees over comments they made on an internal Slack channel criticizing new owner Elon Musk, two former employees had told ABC News.

Controversy has surrounded Musk since he purchased the social media site at the end of October for roughly $44 billion.

In the days since he acquired Twitter, Musk fired top executives, laid off half of the company's staff, formed a content moderation council that will review account reinstatements and revamped the platform's subscription service, Twitter Blue.

ABC News' Max Zahn and Teddy Grant contributed to this story.