“If on way to office, return home”: Twitter to sack employees today
Twitter will tell employees by email on Friday about whether they have been laid off, temporarily closing its offices and preventing staff access, following a week of uncertainty about the company’s future under new owner Elon Musk.
The social media company said in an email to staff that it will alert employees by 9 a.m. Pacific time on Friday (12 p.m. EDT/1600 GMT) about staff cuts.
“In an effort to put Twitter on a healthy path, we will begin the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” an email obtained by Reuters stated.
Twitter has announced that it will temporarily close its offices and suspend all badge access in order to “help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data.”
Twitter employees who are not affected by the layoffs will be notified via work email, according to the social media platform.
The next steps will be communicated to the personnel’s personal email addresses, according to the memo.
The notification of layoffs concludes a week of purges ordered by Musk, who demanded deep cost reductions and imposed an aggressive new work ethic throughout the social media company.
He had already purged the senior ranks of the company, firing the CEO and top finance and legal executives. Others, including the heads of the company’s advertising, marketing, and human resources departments, have departed over the past week.
The long-anticipated layoffs have dampened Twitter’s famously open corporate culture, which was revered by its employees.
Two employees told Reuters that shortly after the email arrived in Twitter employee inboxes, hundreds of people flooded the company’s Slack channels to say goodbye. Sources say that someone invited Musk to join the channel.
Thursday’s email from Twitter stated, “If you are in an office or on your way to an office, please return home.”
According to two sources familiar with the situation and an internal Slack message reviewed by Reuters, Musk has also instructed Twitter Inc.’s teams to find up to $1 billion in annual infrastructure cost savings.
