BLOOD ON THE TRACKS

Twitter lays off 5K contractors in surprise 2nd wave of cuts, more mods lost

One Twitter contractor was laid off mid-update to child safety.

ASHLEY BELANGER - 11/14/2022



Twitter already faces a class-action lawsuit from some staff that the company laid off without providing federally required notice. Now, rather than realize the error of its ways, Twitter decided this weekend that its next round of layoffs should come with no notice at all.

On Saturday, Platformer’s Casey Newton tweeted that a large number of Twitter contract workers based inside and outside the US had been laid off. This decision was seemingly made so abruptly that not even the contractors’ managers were told they’d be losing workers. Business Insider published the email sent out to contract workers, coldly informing them that Monday would be their last day and no work was required of them that day. The Verge estimated that 4,500 to 5,500 workers were affected from content moderation, marketing, engineering, and other teams. By some estimates, this represents 80 percent of all Twitter contract workers.

"One of my contractors just got deactivated without notice in the middle of making critical changes to our child safety workflows," one manager wrote in Slack, according to Newton’s tweet thread.

One contract worker messaged Newton directly to confirm his reporting, claiming, “I learned I was laid off by reading your tweets.”

Insider spoke to two contract workers who were laid off. They said that they noticed that they lost access to their Twitter email accounts before they got the email informing them that they were fired. During the prior round of layoffs, the same thing reportedly happened to Twitter staff.

One of the recently laid-off contract workers told Insider that Twitter’s callous method of conducting layoffs is inappropriate, saying, "I don't understand how they didn't learn from their previous week's debacle of laying off full-time employees without telling them.”Advertisement

According to the internal email that Insider shared, contract workers were told they were being cut due to a “reprioritization and saving exercise in an effort to better focus during this period of resource constraints.” The email informed workers that their contract had ended, asked them to submit any outlying expense reports or time cards, and reminded them of the Non-Disclosure Agreement they signed, promising not to share confidential information about their former projects.

“Thank you for your service,” Twitter signed off the letter, directing any questions from contract workers to the IT staffing company that hired them, Surya Systems, Inc.

Surya Systems did not respond to Ars’ request for comment. Twitter laid off its communications department.

Although this round of layoffs to many seemed to come out of nowhere, Musk told Twitter staff in a recent Q&A session that he still considered the company overstaffed. Journalist Kara Swisher tweeted a question that many watching the Twitter chaos unfold are probably wondering, “Why were there 5,500 contractors in the first place?”

According to The Washington Post, in part due to Russian election interference in 2016, social media companies like Twitter, Google, and Facebook were pressured by Congress to hire thousands of content moderators in 2017. At that time, Facebook confirmed that it had hired about 15,000 contract workers, while Twitter more modestly had doubled its contractors to approximately 1,500.

It would seem that in the years since, Twitter continued growing its contract workers to what Swisher suggested was “major bloat." Swisher suggested this second round of layoffs was perhaps one of the more defensible of Musk’s moves since taking over Twitter.

These newest cuts, however, could further destabilize the platform. Workers told Newton that Twitter losing so many contractors is “expected to have significant impact to content moderation and the core infrastructure services that keep the site up and running.”

Sources reported “bitter” feelings among contract workers laid off—with many workers feeling “stunned.”

“You don’t have to treat people this way,” Newton tweeted in sympathy.

Former Twitter engineer tweets photo of locked-out laptop hours after Musk Tweets 'he's fired' over public disagreement

Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert and Britney Toh

An engineer at Twitter publicly disagreed with Elon Musk about the app's performance on Android devices.

In response, Musk tweeted that Eric Frohnhoefer, who worked at Twitter for more than 6 years, would be fired.

Hours later, Frohnhoefer posted a picture of his locked out work laptop, saying "guess it is official now."

A day after publicly disagreeing with new Twitter owner Elon Musk about the social platform's performance on Android devices, software engineer Eric Frohnhoefer has been fired.

Musk and Frohnhoefer sparred on Twitter on Sunday after the new owner posted he'd "like to apologize for Twitter being super slow in many countries."

"App is doing >1000 poorly batched RPCs just to render a home timeline!" Musk tweeted as an explanation, to which Frohnhoefer — who worked as a software engineer at Twitter for over 6 years — replied saying Musk was "wrong."

Musk then challenged the engineer to explain what he'd done to improve Twitter's performance on Android devices, which spurred public comments that Frohnhoefer should be terminated. Frohnhoefer detailed his work and the areas for potential improvement in a longer thread, which Musk did not interact with.

Instead, in response to one user who commented on Frohnhoefer's attitude and told Musk "you probably don't want this guy on your team," Musk tweeted simply "He's fired."

About six hours later, Frohnhoefer tweeted a photo of his locked out work computer, saying "guess it is official now."

This is the most recent public layoff amongst a host of layoffs that Musk has conducted ever since he took over Twitter as its chief executive. Just over the weekend, Musk laid off Twitter's contract staff, with some affected employees saying they weren't given proper notice of impending layoffs.

Frohnhoefer and Musk's heated exchange on Twitter is not the first time the billionaire has publicly parried with the social platform's staffers. On Monday, Musk and a former Twitter employee clashed over the cost of Twitter's free lunch program when he said the estimated cost per lunch served in the past 12 months exceeded $400.

Musk, Twitter and Frohnhoefer did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.