As Musk embarks on dramatic cost-cutting, he argued on Friday that Twitter “had a huge drop in revenue because of activist groups pushing advertisers, even though nothing has changed with holding back content and we’ve done everything we can to appease the activists.” Brands such as General Motors and General Mills have stopped marketing on the platform since Musk took over, with some advertisers fearing he will allow a wave of hate speech and misinformation to wash over the platform as he takes control. The layoffs come amid a new round of job cuts roiling Silicon Valley as companies grapple with the macroeconomic slowdown. Twitter employees will be notified of their work status by 9 a.m. Pacific time on Friday, according to an email seen by the Financial Times. “In an effort to put Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” said the email, which was obtained by staff on Thursday. “We recognize that this will affect a number of people who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success going forward.” The email did not specify the scale of the downsizing. But Musk has drawn up plans to cut about 3,700 jobs, or half the workforce, according to two people familiar with the plans, who added that the final number could change. The move was immediately met with a class-action lawsuit by a small group of Twitter executives, alleging that the company had violated labor laws by failing to provide the required advance notice. In a sign that the cuts had begun, two staff members said many employees lost access to their company Slack account and email Thursday night. Twitter workers who lost their jobs were told to expect an email in their personal inboxes, while those who remained would be notified via their company email, according to Twitter’s company email. Another employee said some received a second, vague email from Twitter after their work accounts were cut, saying their role at the company was “potentially affected” by the cuts, without elaborating on the layoff or vesting of shares. Although Musk has not publicly discussed the layoffs, Twitter itself lit up with employees announcing their departures, and colleagues often responded with a blue heart emoji in support. “I’m officially out,” wrote researcher Irene Font Peradejordi on Twitter. I’m officially off 🫡 It has been my greatest pleasure to be part of the Responsible ML research family on Twitter for the past year and a half 🫶🏽 – more announcements to come. #TwitterLayoffs — Irene Font Peradejordi 🎈 (@if_peradejordi) November 4, 2022 Ned Miles, who is Twitter’s UK head of audience insights, according to his LinkedIn page, wrote: “I don’t have anything smart to say, I’m just devastated — personally and for the great culture and company that we built together and it’s gone now. I love you all.” The job losses will cap a chaotic first week for Twitter under Musk, during which the world’s richest man overhauled the management team, asked staff to work around the clock on new products and publicly expressed plans to shake up the business via his own Twitter account. There has been an uproar on Twitter for months after Musk first made his offer to buy the company, before trying to back out of the deal while publicly mocking its staff. After a bitter legal battle, the deal closed on Thursday last week, with Musk paying his original offer of $54.20 per share. Musk has made no secret of his plans to revamp Twitter, which has long been criticized for its sluggish pace of product innovation. He has previously said he might cut jobs and costs to make Twitter “healthy” and last week tweeted: “Seems like there are 10 people ‘managing’ for every person coding.” Thursday’s email said Twitter’s offices will be temporarily closed and access to badges will be suspended on Friday “to ensure the safety of every employee, as well as Twitter systems and customer data.” Employees had earlier responded by flooding the social media company’s water cooler Slack channel, a message group meant to be the online version of chatting around the office water cooler, with an emoji of a person saying hello, according to another employee. Recommended Before the email, Twitter employees on Blind, a forum for tech employees to post anonymously, shared their frustration with Musk’s management style. One described current working conditions as a “non-stop nightmare scenario”, adding: “Please fire me.” Another comment called for the layoffs to be made quickly: “It’s psychological torture at this point.” Three plaintiffs in the class action said in a legal filing Thursday in California’s Northern District Court that they had been “locked out of [company] Twitter accounts’. The lawsuit seeks an injunction to block the layoffs, on their part and “all similarly situated employees” in the U.S., so Twitter doesn’t violate the Workers’ Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, the which requires employers to provide 60 days’ notice of “Mass Layoffs” to affected employees. Twitter executives claim Musk took a similar approach this summer when he made cuts at Tesla, the electric car maker led by the billionaire, which led to a lawsuit by employees there. Additional reporting by Madhumita Murgia in London
