Twitter is still up and running as of this writing, but it may not stay that way. There are real fears spreading that the social media site could end up shut down for some period of time after Elon Musk delivered an ultimatum to the remaining employees.

According to reports, Musk specifically gave Twitter’s engineers a deadline to decide whether to stay or go and supposedly, a lot of them are leaving.

Twitter’s Slack currently has hundreds of employees giving the 🫡 emoji, meaning they decided to not stay for Musk’s “Twitter 2.0” cultural reset. The company had just under 3,000 employees remaining before the deadline to say “yes” or not hit 20 min ago.

— Alex Heath (@alexeheath) November 17, 2022

Keep in mind that Alex Heath is a liberal hack who wants Musk to fail. He’s already been running a subversion campaign against the company since the transfer of ownership, quoting anonymous sources to paint a bleak picture of Twitter’s future.

Is that reality, though? I’m skeptical. Musk didn’t get to where he is by being stupid, and he’s so far managed to increase Twitter’s usage since taking over despite claims the site’s traffic would drop off. Employees on their way out the door are also not the best barometer of the situation given they have every incentive to overstate their importance. I’d bet Musk has a team of engineers ready to assist if Twitter’s team dwindles too far.

Besides, at the end of the day, Twitter is a social media site. It’s not a rocket being sent to the moon. The infrastructure is already in place, and the actual manpower needed to keep it running is far less than what the company’s workforce consisted of prior to Musk’s takeover. He’s going to eventually, even if by some trial and error, figure out what is necessary and what isn’t, and I’d suggest you could keep the site running with just a few hundred people if it came down to that.

Still, the chaos going on is real. Musk has actually shut down Twitter HQ and the company’s other office buildings until November 21st as a result.

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.

— Zoë Schiffer (@ZoeSchiffer) November 17, 2022

The move to shut down the building is being spun as tyrannical, but it makes sense to me. There are a lot of angry, leftwing ex-employees who would love nothing more than to see Musk get knocked down a notch. The last thing he can afford is for someone to sabotage the company. Apparently, now that the deadline for employees to choose to stay has passed, access will be whittled down to only those who should be there.

It is important that Musk is able to make this work, and not just for his own financial situation (which will be fine regardless). The left would be incredibly emboldened if they were able to effectively cancel Twitter. I can’t see that happening, though. There are plenty of people out there with the needed skills who would love to go get paid well to work for Twitter. The company’s current workforce has been spoiled and pampered, made to think they are special. They are learning the hard way how untrue that is.