Elon Musk plans a Twitter purge. Most employees will be laid off
Elon Musk announced big changes after taking over Twitter, including… laying off a huge number of employees. According to the billionaire, the social media platform must shrink to a “healthy level”.
After taking over Twitter, Elon Musk plans to lay off about three-quarters of the company’s employees. According to documents made available by The Washington Post, the billionaire announced this to potential investors in the Twitter buyout agreement.
Elon Musk will lay off 75%. Twitter employees
Loss of 75 percent employees means reducing the company’s employment by 5,500 positions, i.e. from the current level of 7,500 to approximately 2,000 people.
This would be consistent with Musk’s previous announcements. In June this year he said that if the platform was taken over, layoffs would be necessary. His argument was that the cost of running the business exceeds revenue and Twitter needs to shrink to a “healthy level.”
Currently, Musk is to buy Twitter by October 28, 2022. Otherwise, he will face a court case for failure to honor the contract worth $44 billion.
Mass layoffs at Twitter – “it’s unimaginable”
The Washington Post also obtained feedback from one of Twitter’s former executives. Data scientist Edwin Chen was formerly head of Twitter’s spam and platform health metrics division. What does he think about layoffs on this scale?
It’s unimaginable. (Layoffs – editor’s note) would have a cascading effect, for example when a given service stops working and people inside the company do not know how to fix it. Employees left in the company would also have a lot of tasks and low morale. They will want to leave their job themselves.
Interestingly, even without a contract with Musk, Twitter still wanted to slim down the company. According to TWP’s information, the company planned to reduce it by 25%, i.e. dismissal of approximately 1,900 employees.
