Elon Musk reportedly plans to fire as much as 50% of Twitter's staff today via email
According to an internal companywide email, Twitter employees will be informed by 9 A.M. PT whether or not they'll have a job under Elon Musk's leadership.
Elon Musk’s big vision for Twitter doesn’t just eliminate free verification. Continuing to wage a war path as the long-time publicly traded companies’ new owner, Musk will fire up to 50% of Twitter’s staff this morning via email, Variety reports.
According to an internal email sent by Twitter, staff will be notified at 9 A.M. PT on November 4 whether or not they’ll have a job in Musk’s new world. The notification will reportedly arrive via… another email.
“In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” the initial memo reads. “We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.”
According to Twitter, the casual cruelty of doling out mass layoffs via email makes sense because of “the nature of our distributed workforce and our desire to inform impacted individuals as quickly as possible.” The message also states that Twitter’s offices will be closed on the day of the layoffs “to help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data.”
Musk has consistently expressed a desire to drastically cut down Twitter’s staff throughout the six-month acquisition. After closing the $44 billion deal on October 27, he swiftly fired a bevy of high-level executives including the CEO and CFO. Asked via Twitter on October 30 what he thought the most messed-up thing about the platform was, Musk responded: “There seem to be 10 people ‘managing’ for every one person coding.”
Despite a lengthy Notes App statement insisting he bought Twitter to “help humanity,” Musk’s layoffs seem more related to covering his own posterior than doing the world good. Per Variety, Musk’s large-scale push to punch up revenue and cut down costs is essential to paying back the $13 billion in debt financing he used to seal the deal. Making the workers under you pay for your mistakes so you can maintain egregious wealth gained through exploitation? Whatever Musk claims to think about lords and peasants, it’s pretty clear which side of the castle wall he’s tweeting from.