Elon Musk has given Twitter’s remaining staff a Thursday deadline to commit to working “long hours at high intensity” and being “extremely hardcore” or else leave with three months’ severance pay.

In an email to the social media platform’s employees, seen by the Guardian, its new owner said building the next iteration of Twitter would require exceptional performance.

“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,” Musk wrote.

The message asked staff to click on a link if they want to be “part of the new Twitter” by 5pm New York time (10pm GMT) on Thursday.

Anyone who has not affirmed their commitment by that deadline, Musk said, would receive three months of severance pay.

“Whatever decision you make, thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful,” Musk added in the email, which was first reported by the Washington Post.

Musk added that Twitter would be “much more engineering-driven” under his ownership and that “those writing great code will constitute the majority of our team”.

The ultimatum follows a severe jobs cull at Twitter at the beginning of November in which Musk laid off 50% of the 7,500-strong workforce within days of taking over the company. Musk also reportedly laid off more than 4,000 contractors, including members of Twitter’s moderation teams, over the weekend.