Employees were told to decide by 5PM ET today.

The deadline has sparked an agonizing debate among Twitter’s remaining employees, who are already reeling from losing half their full-time colleagues and 80 percent of their contractors.

To stay is to be a good steward to Twitter, a service that most employees I’ve spoken with still feel deeply protective of. But it is also to risk being seen as condoning the behavior of Musk, who has consistently denigrated employees’ work, and even to be seen as a “goon” — their word for the team of venture capitalists, lawyers and outside engineers he brought in when he took over the company.