Elon Musk Plans To Fire 50% Twitter Employees; 3500+ Employees Can Be Asked To Quit

Not even a month into his reign, Twitter owner Elon Musk plans to cut about 3,700 jobs at the firm, which translates to half of the company’s workforce in a cost-cutting exercise.

He will inform those affected on Friday.

Further, Musk intends to reverse the company’s existing work from anywhere policy and will require employees to work from office.

India office impacted

People at Twitter’s India office have also been affected.

It is now a place of much chaos and heightened emotions as people have been emailed confirmation of the layoff news and that many will be asked to leave by the end of the day.

Twitter employees all across the world have received this email, with the company instructing them to return home and wait for an email in their inbox.

The mail that will tell employees the status of their employment is sent at 9:30PM India time, Friday.

Sequence of events

Those not affected by the layoffs would be notified via their work email.

Those laid off would be notified of the next steps.

After this mail, many of the India employees were logged out of their official email IDs Friday morning, which came unannounced.

Twitter said it was taking steps “to help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data” by temporarily revoking employee access to its operations.

Gag order

The communication from the company took place at the very last moment without any prior warnings, catching the employees off guard and unprepared.

It also instructed employees to maintain silence regarding the news outside work. 

“We acknowledge this is an incredibly challenging experience to go through, whether or not you are impacted.

Thank you for continuing to adhere to Twitter policies that prohibit you from discussing confidential company information on social media, with the press or elsewhere”, read the memo.

Fired employees will be paid severance although according to a leak Musk is looking to prevent staff from vesting their unvested stocks.

More than half gone

As of writing, at 7:40 pm IST it has been reported that India employees in the sales, engineering and partnerships divisions were “affected”.

In all, more than half of Twitter’s India workforce has been sacked, sources said.

The layoffs have affected all verticals including engineers and the entire marketing and communications department.

The content moderation team is also expected to be a target of the draconian move.

Retaliation via lawsuit

Employees will not go down without a fight, however.

They filed a class action lawsuit on Thursday against Twitter, arguing that the mass layoffs were taking place without providing the required 60-day advance notice, in violation of federal and California law.

They also sought the issuance of an order to restrict Twitter from soliciting those laid off to sign documents without informing them of the pendency of the case.

Employees told Reuters they were left to piece together information through media reports, private messaging groups and anonymous forums.