• Elon Musk laid off half of Twitter's staff. But he'd originally planned to cut even more, per Platformer.

• After he was advised against making bigger cuts, he instead issued staff an ultimatum.

• Staff were told to sign up to "long hours at high intensity" or lose their jobs.

Elon Musk actually wanted to lay off significantly more than half of Twitter's workforce.

But he agreed to laying off just 50% to start with after he was advised again making bigger cuts, Platformer reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.

Instead, he sent staff a now-infamous email telling them to commit to "hardcore" work as a deliberate ploy to push more employees to leave, Platformer reported.

Immediately after taking control of Twitter, Musk fired some key execs including CEO Parag Agrawal and CFO Ned Segal. The next week he started laying off staff, with around half of the company's workforce being cut.

He also began firing some workers who criticized him and his leadership of the company.

On midnight on the night of November 15, Musk sent an email to staff testing their loyalty to his new vision for Twitter. In the email, he briefly outlined "Twitter 2.0" and told workers that they would need to be "extremely hardcore" and work "long hours at high intensity" to stay on at the company.

If they didn't commit by the end of the business day on Thursday, November 17, they would be laid-off and given three months severance.

But fewer people committed to Twitter 2.0 than Musk and his team had expected, Insider previously reported. Sources told Platformer that there was only one person left in Twitter's core services group, which includes workers responsible for user services and serving tweets.

As the 5:00 p.m. deadline approached on Thursday, managers were asked to write lists of staff they thought were "critical" to Twitter but likely to leave, and the company's vice-presidents and Musk himself called some of them in a desperate bid to persuade them to stay on, Insider reported.