Twitter has laid off about 10 per cent of its remaining workforce, bringing the total number of employees roughly below 2,000 from 7,500 in just a few months, according to a report by The New York Times.
The sacked employees included data scientists, engineers and product managers, who helped maintain various Twitter features online. The NYT report, which cites several informed sources, was published on Sunday.
The report states that Twitter had taken off internal messaging service, Slack, offline last week to prevent employees from communicating with each other. They were also barred from accessing files on company data. Some employees said they were logged out of their work email accounts and company laptops on Saturday night, which forebode a new wave of layoffs. Twitter’s monetisation infrastructure team has been impacted as well, and now has only eight employees left. The team previously comprised 30 people.
The company first reported massive layoffs in November, a month after billionaire Elon Musk took over the company for $44 billion. Initially, Musk said there were no plans for staff reductions. However, nearly half of Twitter’s workforce was laid off the following month, prompting a wave of concern across social media. Several crucial teams were disbanded, including the human rights and accountability teams. Protests erupted at the firm in the wake of mass firings, with many employees vacating their workstations and walking out the premises to express dissent against Musk’s erratic and demanding decisions. The billionaire had warned the employees to brace themselves for a rigorous cultural reset that would require them to work “long hours at high intensity”.
Twitter has been facing both instability and uncertainty as to what the platform would look like in the coming months, given that Musk’s controversial leadership has completely rocked the firm. Many of his decisions geared towards achieving the vision of “Twitter 2.0” have backfired, including the paid verification badges. The subscription resulted in a swarm of imposter accounts that went on to tweet misleading claims about businesses, celebrities and other prominent figures. Several advertisers opted out of Twitter after misleading tweets caused the stocks of some multinational companies to plunge, adding to Musk’s woes.
Since his takeover, Musk has been slashing the staff by alarming numbers and experimenting with new features and services to recoup the massive amounts he reportedly borrowed from banks to acquire the now troubled tweeting platform.
