Elon Musk announces Twitter mass layoffs to begin Friday
The reduction, which will be delivered by email, comes as the new Twitter CEO was speculated to cut as much as 50% of staff
Elon Musk will begin mass layoffs at Twitter, according to an email sent to staff on Thursday. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty
Kari Paul, Josh Taylor and agencies
Kari Paul, Josh Taylor and agencies
Fri 4 Nov 2022
Elon Musk will begin mass layoffs at Twitter on Friday, sharply reducing the social media platform’s workforce, the company said in an email to staff on Thursday.
“In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” said the email. The New York Times and Washington Post both reported on the layoffs and cited the internal email.
All employees will receive an email on Friday, the notice said. Those who will keep their jobs will get an email to their work account, those being laid off will receive a notification to their personal email. Employees were reminded not to disclose “confidential company information” on social media or with press.
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The layoffs come as Musk was speculated to cut as much as 50% of Twitter’s workforce, just days after becoming the head of the company he purchased for $44bn. That could mean thousands of jobs lost, as the company had more than 7,000 employees at the end of 2021 according to a regulatory filing.
Twitter said in the email to employees that its offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended in order “to help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data”.
Musk already fired several top Twitter executives immediately upon taking control of the company, including the chief executive, Parag Agrawal, finance chief, Ned Segal, and legal affairs and policy chief, Vijaya Gadde.
Musk’s job slashes come as part of a broader effort to make the company profitable after purchasing it for $44bn, a price he admitted constituted “overpaying”. To complete the deal, Musk put forward a combination of his own funding and loans of approximately $13bn, which he is now facing pressure to pay back.
On Thursday, Musk directed Twitter’s teams to free up $1bn in annual infrastructure cost savings by slashing funding for cloud services and servers. He has floated a number of ideas to make profit at Twitter, including a plan to charge for “verified” badges, and creating an “everything app” that would combine several platforms into one.
The Washington Post, citing an internal source, said the pending layoffs were anticipated to impact the company broadly, with cuts in marketing, product, engineering, legal, and trust and safety.
Experts in misinformation and civil rights advocates have warned that cutting Twitter staff just days before midterm elections in the US could have grave consequences, as the platform has already struggled with content moderation and will now have fewer resources.
“With the horrific attack on Paul Pelosi, we only just witnessed how social media conspiracy theories can result in real-world violence, yet Musk is dangerously speed-running through this process,” said Sacha Haworth, executive director at the Tech Oversight Project.
Twitter employees shared messages of support with one another on the platform on Thursday as layoffs loomed, many using the workplace hashtag #OneTeam.
On Thursday evening into Friday morning, Twitter employees began tweeting about being fired – with some saying they’d learned by being locked out of their work email, laptops, or the company’s internal communications app, Slack.
Just lost access to my Twitter email and Slack. This is all so unreal. #LoveWhereYouWorked #OneTeam— Morgan Bell (@livelovegeek) November 4, 2022
#OneTeam forever. Loved you all so much,” Senior community manager Simon Balmain tweeted. “So sad it had to end this way.”
“Can a heart be full and broken at the same time?” the company’s head of inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility, James Loduca tweeted before removing references to Twitter from his Twitter bio.
The upheaval wasn’t just limited to Twitter’s US operations. In Australia, the company’s local marketing manager also tweeted on Friday “bye Twitter, it’s been a ride.”
Workplace morale has reportedly been suffering for months as the chaotic saga of whether Musk would purchase Twitter wore on, with employees quitting in droves.
Chaos, confusion reign ahead of Twitter layoffs
Sheila Dang and Katie Paul
Thu, November 3, 2022
(Reuters) - Fear and dread spread across Twitter Inc offices on Thursday as 7,500 employees from San Francisco to Singapore feared for job cuts that were planned to hit about half of the staff, according to current and former employees and message board posts shared with Reuters.
Since billionaire Elon Musk took over last week, he has kept employees in the dark. He has not addressed the staff or laid out his plans for the future of the company, leaving workers to study message boards, news reports and tweets by Musk and his advisers for clues about their fate, multiple employees said.
Managers have been forbidden from calling team meetings or communicating directly with staff, one senior Twitter employee said.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Employees have largely stopped posting on internal Slack channels for fear of reprisal from new bosses, with many instead taking to venting in encrypted messaging apps and the dedicated Twitter company channel on the app Blind, which provides a space for employees to share information anonymously.
"I'm really worried tweeps," a Twitter staffer wrote Thursday on Blind, which verifies employees through their work email addresses. Twitter colleagues often refer to each other as "tweeps."
The comment only scratched the surface of the dark and apprehensive mood inside the social media company now controlled by the Tesla Inc chief executive. Employees are waiting to hear if they will still have jobs on Friday, when layoffs are expected to begin, according to speculation among employees.
WAITING FOR THE AXE
Some Twitter employees have stopped taking calls or responding to emails from clients hounding them for information, because they did not know if they still had jobs, one employee told Reuters.
Others raced to meet deadlines by Friday U.S. time, when they expected the axe to fall, another employee said. One manager tweeted of a photo of herself sleeping on the floor of the office in a silver sleeping bag.
While some worried about annual bonuses or how they would be notified of layoffs, others rushed to apply for jobs at other companies. International employees fretted about the status of their visas. One employee sought advice on Blind on whether it was worth mentioning Twitter on their resume.
Employees who spoke with Reuters said they are learning about changes at their company by observing their work calendars and screenshots of discussion from managers, not from official communication from Musk or other leaders.
One employee confirmed that "days of rest," which are highly popular company-wide days off, have been removed from calendars for the rest of the year.
"Give us the details," a Google employee wrote in a Blind post directed at Twitter staff.
"It's worse than everything you're reading. Much worse," answered a Twitter employee.
(Reporting by Sheila Dang in Dallas and Katie Paul in Palo Alto, Calif.; Additional reporting by Arriana McLymore in New York; Editing by Jon Boyle)
Sheila Dang and Katie Paul
Thu, November 3, 2022
(Reuters) - Fear and dread spread across Twitter Inc offices on Thursday as 7,500 employees from San Francisco to Singapore feared for job cuts that were planned to hit about half of the staff, according to current and former employees and message board posts shared with Reuters.
Since billionaire Elon Musk took over last week, he has kept employees in the dark. He has not addressed the staff or laid out his plans for the future of the company, leaving workers to study message boards, news reports and tweets by Musk and his advisers for clues about their fate, multiple employees said.
Managers have been forbidden from calling team meetings or communicating directly with staff, one senior Twitter employee said.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Employees have largely stopped posting on internal Slack channels for fear of reprisal from new bosses, with many instead taking to venting in encrypted messaging apps and the dedicated Twitter company channel on the app Blind, which provides a space for employees to share information anonymously.
"I'm really worried tweeps," a Twitter staffer wrote Thursday on Blind, which verifies employees through their work email addresses. Twitter colleagues often refer to each other as "tweeps."
The comment only scratched the surface of the dark and apprehensive mood inside the social media company now controlled by the Tesla Inc chief executive. Employees are waiting to hear if they will still have jobs on Friday, when layoffs are expected to begin, according to speculation among employees.
WAITING FOR THE AXE
Some Twitter employees have stopped taking calls or responding to emails from clients hounding them for information, because they did not know if they still had jobs, one employee told Reuters.
Others raced to meet deadlines by Friday U.S. time, when they expected the axe to fall, another employee said. One manager tweeted of a photo of herself sleeping on the floor of the office in a silver sleeping bag.
While some worried about annual bonuses or how they would be notified of layoffs, others rushed to apply for jobs at other companies. International employees fretted about the status of their visas. One employee sought advice on Blind on whether it was worth mentioning Twitter on their resume.
Employees who spoke with Reuters said they are learning about changes at their company by observing their work calendars and screenshots of discussion from managers, not from official communication from Musk or other leaders.
One employee confirmed that "days of rest," which are highly popular company-wide days off, have been removed from calendars for the rest of the year.
"Give us the details," a Google employee wrote in a Blind post directed at Twitter staff.
"It's worse than everything you're reading. Much worse," answered a Twitter employee.
(Reporting by Sheila Dang in Dallas and Katie Paul in Palo Alto, Calif.; Additional reporting by Arriana McLymore in New York; Editing by Jon Boyle)
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