“We will begin the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday”Twitter told its employees Thursday in an email seen by AFP, confirming the rumors that had been circulating since Elon Musk bought the social network for 44 billion dollars a week ago
. The message says all employees will receive information by Friday morning when business opens in California, but does not specify how many people will be affected. The new boss of Twitter, also CEO of Tesla, continues to take control of the social network with 230 million users: last week, he had already dissolved the board of directors and fired the CEO and other senior officials.
Half of the employees thanked?
According to the Washington Post, the new leader plans to thank about 50% of the approximately 7,500 employees. “We recognize that a number of individuals who have made notable contributions to Twitter are going to be affected, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success in the future”, the company told employees. Employees will learn of their dismissal by email: “If you are not affected, you will receive a notification on your Twitter email address. If you are affected, you will receive a notification with the next steps on your personal email”said the message sent on Thursday.
This wave of layoffs comes more than a week after billionaire Elon Musk took over Twitter. Elon Musk, who first renamed himself “Chief Twit” (“twit” meaning “idiot” in English), then “Twitter hotline switchboard operator”, brought in developers the day after the takeover. from Tesla to review the work of Twitter employees. Elon Musk seems to want to make big savings within the company. According to two sources familiar with the matter as well as exchanges via the internal professional messaging service Slack, which Reuters was able to read, Elon Musk asked Twitter teams to find up to a billion dollars (about one billion euros) per year in infrastructure savings.
Employees go to court
The Bloomberg agency also reports that employees of the social network have initiated a class action lawsuit in a federal court in San Francisco against Elon Musk’s plan to fire approximately half of the workforce, on the grounds that their employer violated California and federal government on the length of notice before dismissal.
“The ongoing layoff process is a joke and a disgrace. Tesla minions are making decisions about people they know nothing about except the number of lines of code produced. It’s complete nonsense.”tweeted Taylor Leese, the director of an engineering team who said he was fired.