Musk’s mass Twitter layoffs look set to begin within hours

4 Nov 2022

The Twitter logo at its headquarters in San Francisco. Image: Scott Beale/Laughing Squid (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

An internal memo said Twitter’s offices have been temporarily closed and staff will find out through email if they still have a job at the company.

Twitter staff are expected to find out if they’re losing their job later today (4 November), one week after Elon Musk’s takeover of the company.

Employees will be sent an email later today titled ‘Your Role at Twitter’, which will inform them if they still have a job. This is according to an internal mail reportedly from Twitter, cited by multiple news sources including The New York Times and The Washington Post.

The email is signed from ‘Twitter’, with no company management listed as the sender. Those who are losing their jobs will receive a message to their personal email address, it said, while staff staying on will get an email to their work account.

Twitter’s staff are expected to find out their employment status by roughly 4pm Irish time today, according to the memo.

It is unclear how many staff are facing layoffs, but Bloomberg sources have claimed that Musk is planning to cut 3,700 jobs worldwide. This represents about half of the social media company’s workforce and has raised concerns for the future of the 500 staff employed at its Dublin office.

The memo said the jobs cuts are part of an effort to “place Twitter on a healthy path”. When Musk spoke to the company’s staff on a video call in June, he hinted at layoffs, saying the company “does need to get healthy”.

“To help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data, our offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended,” the internal mail reads.

Some Twitter employees are tweeting that their remote work access has been suddenly cut off.

Product changes

Meanwhile, information shared to Platformer claims Musk is planning to cut some products within Twitter’s portfolio. This includes Revue, the newsletter platform that Twitter acquired in 2021, which is reportedly going to be shut down later this year.

The company’s Notes product has also reportedly been put on an indefinite pause, along with plans to build a cryptocurrency wallet for Twitter. The platform teamed up with Stripe Connect earlier this year to test payouts using crypto for select Twitter creators.

Musk is also looking at more ways for the platform to make money, such as letting users pay to send private messages to high-profile users, according to two people with knowledge of the matter and internal documents seen by The New York Times.

The newly minted CEO has proposed charging users $8 a month to retain their verified status. The blue tick mark next to a username is currently free, but is typically reserved for high-profile figures and users who have been verified as trustworthy sources.

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Twitter logo at its headquarters in San Francisco. Image: Scott Beale/Laughing Squid via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Leigh Mc Gowran is a journalist with Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com