Sent at midnight Pacific time on November 16, 2022. It gave remaining Twitter employees until 5 p.m. ET the next day to commit to "the new Twitter" or take three months of severance.

From: Elon Musk To: Team [at Twitter] Subj. A Fork in the Road

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. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.

Twitter will also be much more engineering-driven. 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.

At its heart, Twitter is a software and servers company, so I think this makes sense.

If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below:

[The link was removed before publication.]

Anyone who has not done so by 5pm ET tomorrow (Thursday) will receive three months of severance.

Whatever decision you make, thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful.

Read the email as transcribed by CNBC.