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Elon Musk

has sent an email to

Twitter

employees , most of whom are telecommuting, ordering them to return to the office immediately for at least 40 hours a week and warning them of "tough times ahead." .

A pair of emails sent Wednesday night seen by The Associated Press mark the first message from Musk's company to employees who survived last week's mass layoffs.

Many had had to rely on public tweets from Tesla's billionaire CEO for clues about Twitter's future.

"I'm sorry this is my first company-wide email, but there's no way to sugarcoat the message,"

Musk wrote, before describing a dire economic climate for companies like Twitter, which rely almost entirely on advertising to make money. .

"Without significant subscription revenue, there's a good chance Twitter won't survive the next economic juncture," Musk said.

"We need about half of our revenue to be from subscription," he added.

Musk's memo followed a livestreamed conversation trying to calm major advertisers on Wednesday.

They were his most extensive public comments on Twitter's leadership since he closed a $44 billion deal to buy the social media platform late last month and fired his top executives.

One of them said last week that Twitter was laying off about 50% of its workforce, which numbered 7,500 employees at the beginning of this year.

Musk had previously expressed

distaste for pandemic-era remote work policies

, which allowed team leaders to decide whether employees had to report to the office.

On Wednesday he ordered all employees to return to their work centers this Thursday.

The social network's new owner assured employees in the email that "remote work is no longer allowed" and that the road ahead is "arduous and will require hard work to succeed."

And he added that he would personally review any exception requests.

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