After going through with his deal to buy Twitter, one of Elon Musk’s first orders of business was to fire about 50% of the staff, the equivalent of 3,700 people.
One of the layoffs included software engineer Jaseem Abid who says he was laid off in his sleep. Abid claimed that when he awoke, he was already locked out of his email and Slack channels and that his work laptop had been wiped remotely.
He took to Twitter to state, “Woke up to no slack/Gmail/office access and laptop remotely wiped out. Got fired without even a confirmation email while sleeping? There is always a new low. #twitter”
Another employee, Rachel Bonn, was eight months pregnant and was planning to use her paid maternity leave when she similarly awoke locked out of all her work logins. “Last Thursday in the SF office, really the last day Twitter was Twitter. 8 months pregnant and have a 9-month-old. Just got cut off from laptop access #LoveWhereYouWorked,” Bonn tweeted.
Emails were sent out explaining the terminations and detailing the severance package.
Musk stated that the layoffs were necessary as Twitter was losing more than $4 million per day. Musk tweeted, “Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately, there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required.”
Included in the layoffs were some of Twitter’s top execs who made the decision to ban Donald Trump, as reported by The Dallas Express.
On Monday, Musk asked a few dozen employees to return, stating they had been laid off by accident. In addition to the layoffs, Musk has revoked the company’s “day of rest” for employees and plans to eliminate the remote-work policy.
Twitter recently rolled out a new ‘Twitter Blue’ subscription plan, offering a verification check mark for users who pays a monthly fee of $8. Additional features the company expects to launch include a reduction in advertisements, the ability to post longer videos, and the ability to get priority ranking in replies, mentions, and searches, as reported by The Dallas Express.
Twitter is not the only company in the industry scaling down its workforce. Mark Zuckerberg recently announced the firing of over 11,000 employees, while other tech companies have instituted hiring freezes and layoffs of their own.
