Yahoo Finance Live anchors discuss Elon Musk's latest push to remake the Twitter platform and his attitude toward the social media's employees.

Video Transcript

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BRIAN SOZZI: Elon Musk is issuing an ultimatum-- ultimatum to Twitter employees, commit to hardcore Twitter or leave. In emails seen by multiple news outlets, Musk told workers they have until Thursday at 5:00 PM to pledge to be part of the new Twitter or receive three months of severance pay.

I guess my take on this may not come as a surprise. But is it any-- is it a problem that Elon wants his workers to work hard so they re-invent the platform? Is it a bad thing?

BRAD SMITH: It's-- there's hard and then there's inhumanely hard. Elon has talked about some extensive hours at Twitter, like 80 hour workweeks at Twitter, which-- I mean, in comparison to the type of talent retention or the type of environment that many workers in tech have become accustomed to, whether that's having nap pods or being able to have some of the collaborative settings be very open, and airy, and kind of an environment that really is more of a-- not just a lifestyle but a worker's perhaps paradise, if you will, in some senses because of the amenities that come along with it. Elon wants to strip all out of that experience. And in order to also cut down on, perhaps, the number of things that just have nothing to do with Twitter actually.

JULIE HYMAN: Sozz has no problem with any of this. He would sleep at the office if he could.

BRIAN SOZZI: I knew you were gonna.

JULIE HYMAN: Which is what Elon Musk is doing.

BRIAN SOZZI: I saw that.

JULIE HYMAN: I can't see what the faces you're making are.

BRIAN SOZZI: I saw. It. I saw. it.

JULIE HYMAN: You're making these faces. Here's the thing, Musk's message to Twitter employees has consistently been, you suck, right? Across the board. You're lazy. You haven't done good work. This company is terrible.

And this is just another example of that. Because the implication is, if you have to be extremely hard core and work hard now, the implication is that you haven't been. That you haven't been working hard. That you've been lazy. That you haven't been doing a good job.

And like I don't think people love being told that over and over again. Now, there are certainly employees who will sign up for this and they'll say, yes, you're right, I think that Twitter's been on the wrong path. And I want to be part of the new Twitter and push this forward. Like there are still some people working there, right?

BRIAN SOZZI: Maybe they-- maybe they do suck. This company has lost billions of dollars. They've had a horribly performing stock price, when they were a public company relative to the IPO. And you sit here today, why aren't they making gobs sums of money from a subscription product? Maybe they do, in fact, suck. And maybe Elon is right here.

BRAD SMITH: But the workers suck or the vision from the management sucks?

BRIAN SOZZI: Everything. All of it.

BRAD SMITH: Yeah.

BRIAN SOZZI: The whole place sucks.

JULIE HYMAN: It's impossible that the work-- that like all of the rank and file there is terrible, right?

BRAD SMITH: Yeah.

JULIE HYMAN: This is a product that we--

BRIAN SOZZI: Not everyone.

JULIE HYMAN: This is a product--

BRIAN SOZZI: Of course, not.

JULIE HYMAN: --that-- for like all of the complaints about yada, yada, yada, this is a product that we use every single day. So like, yes, the stock price has been bad, et cetera, but the product itself--

BRIAN SOZZI: And they should be making more money from it.

JULIE HYMAN: --is a very useful product. And by the way, when you're talking about, oh, the stock price, duh, duh, duh, duh. The stock price did much worse after Elon got involved and started, you know, talking about how terrible it was. I don't know.

BRIAN SOZZI: My phone just started ringing. I thought it was actually somebody at Twitter. Sorry, I just had to check. Sorry.

BRAD SMITH: Well, and he said that Twitter is going to be much more engineering-driven, according to this note, this internal memo. They're saying that it's gonna be much more engineering-driven. Design and product management still very important. And report to him. But those writing great code will constitute the majority of our team and have the greatest sway.

But perhaps what some of the workforce is really latching on to is the fact that he said, this is going to mean working long hours at high intensity. And only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.

JULIE HYMAN: And by the way, guess what? Musk has not got done exceptional performance thus far. He's got advertisers leaving in droves. He's now had to push back the introduction of the new Twitter Blue product. He says, it's gonna be coming at the end of the month now because the rollout was so terrible. It was terrible.

You have major advertisers having imposter accounts on the platform. That caused Eli Lilly to say, we're gonna pause advertising, adding to the already numerous people and companies that were pausing their advertising. So like, if you're grading him on the first few weeks--

BRIAN SOZZI: But look at--

JULIE HYMAN: --not so great.

BRIAN SOZZI: --what a working extremely hard core is done at his other companies. We have now rockets. This guy is sending rockets into outer space.

JULIE HYMAN: Just because you're--

BRIAN SOZZI: --he's building electric vehicles.

JULIE HYMAN: --good at one thing, doesn't mean you're good at everything.

BRIAN SOZZI: Well, he also helped build PayPal.

BRAD SMITH: It's one--

JULIE HYMAN: There are a lot of other people help build PayPal as well, but we'll just see how it ends.

BRAD SMITH: It's just extremely unconventional to have a form like this that you send around to the entire workplace and essentially say, I pledge allegiance to the bird.

BRIAN SOZZI: I'm with you on that.