Yahoo Finance Live anchors discuss reports that Twitter headquarters will remain closed following Elon Musk’s ultimatum to employees.

Video Transcript

- Elon Musk Twitter saga continues, as the social media outfit told employees that its office buildings will be temporarily closed. The announcement comes amid reports that large numbers of staff were quitting after new owner Elon Musk called on them to sign up for long hours at high intensity or quit. Well, guys, this is one way to weed out the weak ends.

- Well, or weed out everyone.

- Everybody, everybody.

- Yeah, if everybody is leaving as a result of this--

- Yeah, I have no hands, no hands.

- --it goes to show that it's a management error, not necessarily an employee error. The employees are clearly just indicating, look, the workplace culture--

- I just went under fire, I'm sure. Where's security?

- Yeah, one minute into the show.

- They're just ready to clobber me, just so ready.

- She walked back over fresh from the YFi Interactive. OK, so yes, here's what took place. And there's the entire Twitter saga. But I think over the course of this week, that's what really ratcheted it up on the employee-employer relations front.

And especially knowing that so many people were already disgruntled with the fact that they had Elon Musk taking over the company that they have worked at for years, that they have been able to establish this workplace culture, and now are either being laid off en masse or seeing their friends laid off en masse or just deciding for themselves, you know what, I'm not pledging allegiance to a company that I don't know what the future is going to look like. I'm not getting the same type of equity that I would have as when Twitter was a pre-IPO company or even a publicly traded company. So what's the incentive?

- Let's review, shall we? Right? I think we can all agree culture is important when you're talking about a place you want to work. Imagine your new boss comes in. He's been insulting you and your coworkers for months, publicly, very publicly. Then he comes and takes over the company, carries a sink in, and says, let that sink in, enters with a-- let's be honest, a really bad joke.

Like, this guy should not be back on "SNL" anytime soon, and then proceeds to say to everyone, you're not working hard enough. Unless you sign a pledge to work harder, we don't want you at the company. So culturally, what does that tell you about the person who is now running your workplace? And obviously, it says a lot of people don't want to be participating in that culture.

- He says he wants the best people. What's wrong with that?

- He already that everyone there is horrible and has been saying that for months. So why do you want to work for somebody like that?

- Well, luckily, we don't have to. But I'm just saying, here's someone who's trying to reinvent the platform. I'm not agreeing with his methods here. I mean, I've never seen anything like this. I've been covering CEOs and executives for almost 20 years now. I've never seen anything like this before.

But I will say this, he has come in here and ripped a Band-Aid off on a company that's been losing lots of money, for whatever reason. And you know what? It's a horrible situation, don't get me wrong. You hate to see things like this. But at the end of the day, he's going to be left, we would think, with top performers.

- But remember, he ripped the band off. But the company was functioning before. Things got much worse for Twitter after he started jumping around and shouting about it. It wasn't a stock winner by any means. But it wasn't completely dysfunctional, either as a platform or as a company.

- And that's the risk that they run right now. When you have as many employees that have said, you know what, it's 5:00 PM, we're logging off of this video conference call, as some employees apparently did. Based on a report from the "Washington Post," there were people who were called into a video conference and were asked, essentially, to stay after so many people.

- Yes.

- And it was evident that so many people were about to leave in critical functioning roles to make sure the operations at Twitter could keep them in compliance, could keep them from having these larger issues of privacy and some of the protocols that they had set into place actually more vulnerable now. And that is the case, is that people's data could be more vulnerable now, people's interactions I mean. All of the ability for them to operate on Twitter that they have become accustomed to for many years is in jeopardy as a result of this.

- I think the "Washington Post" had probably one of the best write ups, at least right now this morning, really detailing in some critical areas of the business. There's no employees or one. And you've been following this extensively, Julie, especially on Twitter. You got that sense last night, maybe the platform might shut down this weekend.

- Yeah, people were having trouble accessing certain things. There was this feeling on Twitter last night among the so-called power users, that this was-- somebody compared it to an Irish wake, where people were sharing memories. People-- Twitter has held a really important role in people's lives, even above and beyond other platforms. People have met spouses over Twitter. People have gotten jobs over Twitter. Certainly those of us in the news business have shared news on Twitter.

And Elon Musk, in his tone deaf way, saying, "Record numbers of users are logging in to see if Twitter is dead, ironically making it more alive than ever." And I also said-- I tweeted actually this morning that it felt a little bit like-- you guys want appreciate this reference. But there's a Ben Folds song about a guy who you think he's leaving town, and so every night they're celebrating him, but then they finally catch on. He's not actually leaving.

- I never heard of Ben Folds, actually.

- Anyway, so the point is, maybe the rumors of Twitter's death will end up being greatly exaggerated. But it seems like it's limping along here with a skeleton staff.

- Yeah, we'll see what the weekend holds here.

- Yes, exactly.

- And that could be critical.