Elon Musk announces mass layoffs

Billionaire Elon Musk has announced massive layoffs at Twitter, which he acquired last week, starting on Friday. The reduction, which will be notified to employees by email, is due to the fact that the new CEO of the social network decided to cut up to 50% of the staff.

Elon Musk is starting mass layoffs on Twitter, which will drastically reduce the social media platform’s workforce, the company said in an email to employees on Thursday.

“As we strive to put Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of downsizing our global workforce on Friday,” the email said. The New York Times and The Washington Post both reported layoffs and cited internal emails.

The notice states that all employees will receive an email on Friday. Those who keep their jobs will receive an email to their work account. And those who are fired will receive a notification to their personal email. Employees were reminded not to disclose “confidential information about the company” on social media or in the press.

The layoffs came as Musk was expected to cut up to 50% of Twitter’s workforce just days after taking over the company he bought for $44 billion. This could mean the loss of thousands of jobs: according to regulations, the company had more than 7,000 employees at the end of 2021.

Twitter said in an email to employees that its offices will be temporarily closed.

Elon Musk has already fired several top executives at Twitter in the immediate aftermath of taking control of the company, including chief executive officer Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal and chief legal and policy officer Vijay Gadde.

Musk’s job cuts are part of a broader effort to make the company profitable after buying it for $44 billion, which the world’s richest man admitted is an “overpayment.” To complete the deal, Musk offered a combination of his own financing and about $13 billion in loans, which he is now forced to repay.

On Thursday, Musk directed Twitter teams to free up $1 billion in annual infrastructure savings from cloud and server funding cuts. He came up with a number of ideas to monetize Twitter, including a plan to charge fees for “verified” accounts and create an “app for everything” that would combine multiple platforms into one.

The Washington Post, citing an inside source, said the upcoming layoffs are expected to have a wide impact on the company, including cuts in marketing, products, engineering, legal, and trust and safety.

Disinformation experts and civil rights advocates have warned that Twitter’s downsizing just days before the US midterm elections could have major repercussions as the platform has already struggled with content moderation and will now have fewer resources.

“After the horrific attack on Paul Pelosi [муж спикера Палаты представителей Нэнси Пелоси, пострадавший у себя дома в Сан-Франциско в результате атаки вооруженного молотком мужчины – «МК»] we have just witnessed how social media conspiracy theories can lead to violence in the real world, but Musk is accelerating the process dangerously,” said Sasha Haworth, Executive Director of the Tech Oversight Project.

Twitter employees exchanged messages of support with each other on the platform on Thursday as layoffs loomed, many using the #OneTeam workplace hashtag.

Senior Community Manager Simon Balmain tweeted that he believes he was fired after he remotely logged out of his work laptop and was removed from the company’s internal communications app, Slack.

Workplace morale reportedly suffered for months as the chaotic saga of whether Musk would buy Twitter continued and employees quit en masse.