Elon Musk on Twitter layoffs: No choice when company is losing over $4 million per day

Elon Musk has already fired about half of Twitter’s 7,500 staff members, leaving whole teams completely or almost completely depleted. The firings include those responsible for fending off election propaganda ahead of next week’s US midterm elections, The Verge reported.

According to tweets from fired staff members and sources familiar with the situation cited in The Verge report, the parts of Twitter most impacted by Musk’s cuts include its policy, communications, tweet curation, ethical AI, data science, research, machine learning, social good, accessibility, and even some core engineering teams.

Also read: Elon Musk’s ‘Deep Cuts Plan’: Will Twitter crash during US midterms?

Although internal documents examined by Reuters this week showed Musk was seeking to slash approximately 3,700 Twitter employees, or about half the workforce, the firm remained silent about the extent of the cuts.

However, Twitter’s new boss tweeted on Friday, “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.”

Following Musk’s dismissals of Twitter’s senior leadership last week, more company leaders have also been let go, including Arnaud Weber, VP of consumer product engineering, and Tony Haile, a senior director of product in charge of Twitter’s work with news publishers.

Musk’s layoffs started on Thursday night, not long after an internal memo that said the company would “go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce” was sent out. A second unsigned email with the subject line “Your Role at Twitter” informed affected employees of their employment status before they had even noticed they were locked out of their work accounts.

Also read: Musk complains about activists destroying ‘free speech’ as companies push pause on advertising

Employees on the platform reported that Twitter’s curation team, which is in charge of “highlighting and contextualizing the best events and stories that unfold on Twitter,” had been fired. A Twitter official in Asia claims that the company’s Indian communications department has also been reduced in size.

People around the world tweeted blue hearts and salute emojis to show their support for one another while using the hashtags #OneTeam and #LoveWhereYouWorked, which was the past tense of the phrase staff members had long used to honour the workplace’s culture.