Musk begins laying off Twitter employees, shuts offices ‘temporarily’

Employees were set to receive an email by 9 a.m. PST (9.30 p.m. India time) confirming whether they have been laid off or not, according to an internal memo seen by The Verge.

San Francisco: Twitter has notified employees that it will be “reducing its global workforce” on Friday, as its new CEO Elon Musk aims to cut roughly half of its 7,600-strong workforce.

Employees were set to receive an email by 9 a.m. PST (9.30 p.m. India time) confirming whether they have been laid off or not, according to an internal memo seen by The Verge.

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The employee badge access to Twitter’s offices will be shut off “temporarily”.

“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. If you are in an office or on your way to an office, please return home,” Twitter said in an internal memo.

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

“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,” the company added.

According to the report, Musk’s team of advisors has determined which engineers and technical managers to keep based on their contributions to Twitter’s codebase.

In Twitter’s Slack and group chat groups, employees complained about the lack of internal communication from Musk and other senior executives.

“Given the nature of our distributed workforce and our desire to inform impacted individuals as quickly as possible, communications for this process will take place via email,” said the company.

“If your employment is impacted, you will receive a notification with next steps via your personal email,” said the company.

Twitter said this is an incredibly challenging experience to go through, whether or not you are impacted.

Musk took over as the Twitter boss last week and immediately fired Indian-origin CEO Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, the company’s policy chief Vijaya Gadde, among others.

The company’s chief marketing officer Leslie Berland is also leaving, along with other senior people amid growing uncertainty.