Twitter founder Jack Dorsey on Sunday apologized to the employees of the company, a day after the social media company laid off nearly 50 percent of its workforce.
The move was taken as part of new owner Elon Musk’s big revamp plan. He said he regrets expanding the micro-blogging platform too quickly.
“Folks at Twitter past and present are strong and resilient. They will always find a way no matter how difficult the moment. I realize many are angry with me. I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation: I grew the company size too quickly. I apologize for that,” Dorsey tweeted.
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“I am grateful for, and love, everyone who has ever worked on Twitter. I don’t expect that to be mutual in this moment…or ever…and I understand,” he added.
Elon Musk fired about half of Twitter’s 7,500 staff members, leaving whole teams completely or almost completely depleted.
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, according to sources familiar with the situation cited in The Verge report.
However, Reuters reported that Musk was seeking to slash approximately 3,700 Twitter jobs, or about half the workforce.
However, Twitter’s new boss said in a tweet: “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.”
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Musk’s layoffs started on November 3, not long after an internal memo was sent out saying that the company would “go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce.”
Yash Agarwal, a 25-year-old Indian man who was laid off, wrote: “Just got laid off. Bird App, it was an absolute honour, the greatest privilege ever to be part of this team, this culture.”
After taking over Twitter, he soon fired several of the company’s top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and head of legal, policy, and trust Vijaya Gadde.