Elon Musk has fulfilled his promise to clean the ranks of Twitter. He has culled around 50% of its entire workforce to rationalize the business.
The Twitter transition team told staff that they would receive an email to let them know if they still have a job or not. Internal managers have pegged the job cut at around 50% of the entire staff.
Musk recently hinted the potential of job cuts to potential investment partners when he looked for funds for his Twitter acquisition.
Recent reports had suggested that Musk would cut 75% of Twitter’s 7,500 workers. It would have reduced the business to a 2000+ skeleton crew.
Musk denied this figure. He claimed that he wasn’t the source.
In Musk’s investor presentations, he noted that Twitter would bring in more staff after the downsizing. It would add more than 2,700 employees by 2025.
News of the job cut broke at around 8 PM ET Wednesday. Some leaked internal conversations and notes suggested that Twitter’s transition management would cut around 50% of the company’s 7,500 employees to cut costs and return to profit.
Rreports suggested that substantial moves were in progress. Twitter executives went dark in the company’s Slack channels. Some were reportedly escorted out of the building by security.
Twitter has canceled its upcoming Chirp developer conference on November 16th.
A sad day for staff who have tried to impress their new owner and save their jobs. But to no avail.
Those who are left will have more pressure and fewer resources to persevere with Musk’s reformation plans.
The Musk transition team has called on the company to cut infrastructure costs by $1 billion per year.
Twitter is also ending its newsletter offering. It was only last year that it acquired the newsletter platform Revue.
Musk has implied that he may allow long-form content options in the app.
We’ll see what other measures Musk will execute during his ownership.
