November 1, 2022
According to the Washington Post, Elon Musk intends to lay off a quarter of Twitter’s workforce in an initial round of job cuts to offset the debt burden accumulated during the Twitter buying saga. Musk’s longtime lawyer Alex Spiro is leading the talks and negotiations on the planned job cuts.
Elon Musk has also appointed himself CEO of Twitter and dissolved the board of directors, the company said in a statement to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Musk later tweeted that the dissolution of the board was “just temporary.”
Twitter employees have reason to worry about proposed layoffs under the new administration, which has already fired Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and Legal Affairs and Policy Chief Vijaya Gadde upon the completion of the deal.
Despite Musk’s denials of a New York Times report about firing Twitter employees before November 1, rumors are circulating on Twitter that some data engineers have been fired, and Musk is calling on Tesla engineers to meet with Twitter product leaders and review the site’s code.
Rumors have been circulating for weeks that Musk would lay off a significant portion of Twitter’s workforce. According to the Washington Post, Musk has told potential investors that he plans to lay off nearly 75% of Twitter’s workforce in order to reduce the debt burden, which has grown significantly since the start of his acquisition. However, he has rejected claims that he will cut 75% of Twitter’s workforce and said that he would not cut such a large portion of its workforce.
The sources for this piece include an article in Reuters.
