Techcrunch: According to an internal memo (link below) sent to Twitter employees, the new management under Elon Musk will begin conducting layoffs Friday morning. These layoffs have been rumored since before Musk’s takeover, with the most recent report estimating that half of the 7,500 employees will lose their jobs.
On Thursday evening, all employees received an email stating that they will be informed of their employment status at 9 A.M. PT on Friday. Each email will be sent with the subject line “Your Role at Twitter.” If an employee is keeping their job, they’ll be notified via their work email — if they’re let go, they’ll be notified on a personal address.
“To help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data, our offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended,” the email reads. “If you are in an office or on your way to an office, please return home.”
The email was impersonally signed “Twitter.”
According to a post from a Twitter employee, staff members have been flooding an internal Slack channel with blue heart emojis as they wait to learn their fate tomorrow. (Update: the tweet has since been deleted.)
The love is real. #OneTeam pic.twitter.com/t1txt74SbZ
— Cristina Angeli (@CA_CrissyAngel) November 4, 2022
Musk’s team has already tried to evaluate the productivity of Twitter employees by asking engineers to print out the code that they have written in the last 30 to 60 days. Musk also brought in Tesla engineers to look over Twitter code.
Still, it’s not clear what divisions of the company will be impacted. At Tesla, Musk axed the entire PR team a few years ago — by that notion, it’s likely that he will get rid of Twitter’s PR team.
Musk’s deal to buy Twitter included making the company take on $13 billion in debt from banks, which means Twitter will owe about $1 billion a year in interest payments.
According to a report from Platformer, Twitter’s newsletter service Revue will be shut down by the end of the year. Revue was acquired by Twitter in January 2021 for an undisclosed amount. The report also says that Notes, a longform posting feature, is on hold, as is Twitter’s plan to build crypto wallets.
When Musk first took over last week, he immediately fired four key executives: CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, General Counsel Sean Edgett and Head of Legal Policy, Trust and Safety Vijaya Gadde. Twitter’s Chief Consumer Officer Sarah Personette and Chief of People and Diversity Dalana Brand resigned the following day.
This story is developing…
Story Source:
https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/03/twitter-layoffs-elon-musk/
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SAN FRANCISCO — Elon Musk will begin laying off Twitter employees on Friday, according to a companywide email, culling the social media service’s 7,500-person work force a little over a week after completing his blockbuster buyout.
Twitter employees were notified in the email that the layoffs were set to begin, according to a copy of the message seen by The New York Times. Workers were instructed to go home and not go to the offices on Friday as the cuts proceeded. The message, which came from a generic address and was signed “Twitter,” did not detail the total number of layoffs.
“In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global work force,” the email said. “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.”
About half of Twitter’s workers appeared set to lose their jobs, according to previous internal messages and an investor, though the final count may take time to become clear. As the email landed in employee inboxes on Thursday evening, workers posted salute emojis and heart emojis in Slack, the messaging service. Later in the evening, some employees said they had lost access to the company’s systems, a possible prelude to being laid off.
Mr. Musk completed his $44 billion purchase of Twitter on Oct. 27 and immediately fired its chief executive and other top managers. More executives have since resigned or were let go, while managers were asked to draw up lists of high- and low-performing employees, likely with an eye toward job cuts. Mr. Musk also brought in more than 50 engineers and employees from his other companies, including the electric carmaker Tesla, to review the layoff lists of Twitter workers and the social platform’s technology.
The world’s richest man faces pressure to make Twitter work financially. The deal was the largest leveraged buyout of a technology company in history. The billionaire also loaded about $13 billion in debt on Twitter for the acquisition and is on the hook to pay about $1 billion a year in interest payments. But Twitter has often lost money, and its cash flow is not robust. Mr. Musk may benefit from cutting costs so the company is less expensive to operate.
Mr. Musk and Twitter did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Twitter’s layoffs are unlikely to be the largest in the tech industry by total number. The computer manufacturer HP cut 24,600 of its employees, about 7.5 percent, in 2008. It later cut tens of thousands more, reaching about 30 percent of its work force.
Elon Musk’s Acquisition of Twitter
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A blockbuster deal. In April, Elon Musk made an unsolicited bid worth $44 billion for the social media platform, saying he wanted to turn Twitter into a private company and allow people to speak more freely on the service. Here’s how the monthslong battle that followed played out:
The response. Twitter’s board countered Mr. Musk’s offer with a defense mechanism known as a “poison pill.” This well-worn corporate tactic makes a company less palatable to a potential acquirer by making it more expensive to buy shares above a certain threshold.
Securing financing. Though his original offer had scant details and was received skeptically by Wall Street, Mr. Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, moved swiftly to secure commitments to finance his bid, putting pressure on Twitter’s board to take his advances seriously.
Striking a deal. With the financing in place, Twitter’s board met with Mr. Musk in April to discuss his offer. The two sides soon reached a deal, with the company agreeing to sell itself for $54.20 a share — roughly $44 billion in total.
Tensions arise. Not long after Mr. Musk and Twitter reached their agreement, problems began. Mr. Musk threatened to pull out of the deal if Twitter did not provide more information on how it calculates the number of fake accounts. In June, the company announced that it planned to give him access to a large swath of its data.
Musk backs out. In July, Mr. Musk announced that he was terminating the deal, citing the continuing disagreement over the number of spam accounts. Twitter then sued the billionaire to force him to go through with the deal. But Mr. Musk fired back in a legal filing, arguing that the company concealed the true number of fake accounts on its platform, accusing Twitter of fraud.
Preparing for trial. Lawyers for both sides have issued more than 100 subpoenas ahead of a trial that was expected to start in October, mostly targeting tech VIPs. In September, a judge ruled that Mr. Musk could amend his suit to include accusations from a former Twitter security chief who claimed that the company misled the public about its security practices.
A surprise move. On Oct. 4, Mr. Musk proposed a deal to acquire Twitter for $44 billion, the price he agreed to pay for the company in April. On Oct. 27, the purchase was completed. Mr. Musk quickly began cleaning house, with at least four top Twitter executives — including the chief executive and chief financial officer — getting fired.
More recently, other tech companies have slashed jobs. On Thursday, Lyft said it would lay off 13 percent, or about 650, of its 5,000 employees. Stripe, a payment processing platform, said it would cut 14 percent of its jobs, or roughly 1,100.
Jesse Lehrich, a founder of Accountable Tech, an industry advocacy organization, said the layoffs amounted to an arbitrary purge just days before the midterm elections on Tuesday.
“There is nothing visionary or innovative about summarily firing” workers by email, he said, especially people who have “specialized expertise and deep institutional knowledge” and before Mr. Musk “even seems to have a basic grasp of the business.”
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Source (paywall):
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/03/technology/twitter-layoffs-elon-musk.html