Twitter has informed staff that there will be a round of layoffs today and that they will be notified through email as to whether they will still have a job at the company which is part of Elon Musk’s significant cost-cutting initiative.
The company-wide email however made no mention of the size of the reductions.
According to recent allegations, Musk has been considering firing approximately 3,700 of Twitter’s 7,500 employees, or about 50 per cent of the workforce.
At a town hall meeting last summer, Musk told employees that Twitter had to “rationalise headcount, which was a prelude to him saying that he would make job cuts there.
“There seem to be ten people managing for every one person coding at Twitter,” Musk said in response to a question on Twitter on October 30 asking him to name the one thing that’s most messed-up at Twitter right now.
“We will begin the challenging process of decreasing our global workforce on Friday in an effort to put Twitter on a healthy path. “We acknowledge that this will have an impact on a number of people who have contributed greatly to Twitter, but this step is regrettably required to ensure the company’s success going forward,” the message stated.
According to the internal email, Twitter personnel will be informed by 9 a.m. today about whether they have been given pink slips or will remain employed due to the nature of their scattered workforce and their desire to tell impacted individuals as fast as possible.
The company-wide memo stated that Twitter will be offline today to help protect the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and user data.
Following a six-month back-and-forth in which the world’s wealthiest individual repeatedly attempted to back out of the transaction (and later complained he was “clearly overpaying”), Musk finally agreed to pay 44 billion dollars for Twitter on October 27.
However, he will be paying in part because he has to recoup the 13 billion dollar in debt financing he needed to close the deal, Musk, who is now the CEO of Twitter, Tesla, and SpaceX, is eager to cut expenses at Twitter and increase income.
Musk revealed that the cost of a Twitter Blue subscription will rise from 4.99 dollars to 8 dollars per month and will become the only way to obtain blue check-mark authentication on the platform, in addition to other additional benefits, in what he thinks will become a significant new revenue source.
Many Twitter users have objected to the 8 dollar monthly fee, and some have even mocked it, prompting Elon Musk to defend his choice.
