The old Twitter is dead, buried by mass layoffs.
Just a week into billionaire Elon Musk‘s tenure as Chief Twit, and he’s now laid off a large portion of the staff, leaving the social platform reeling with an uncertain future. It’s unclear just yet exactly how many people have been impacted by these layoffs, but early reports stated at least a few thousand of Twitter’s 7,500 employees would be let go, or roughly half. At a conference Friday, Musk nodded along as someone suggested he laid off half the staff while also not commenting directly, CNN reported.
The company started laying people off late Thursday and continued into Friday morning, with all moves expected to have been completed by the middle of the day.
Even by mass layoff standards, this has all been pretty impersonal and quite public. Twitter employees have been subjected to nonstop media coverage, online rumors, and attention from Musk’s legion of very online fans. Though the layoffs had been long rumored, things became official when the company sent a rather cold memo to its employees late Thursday afternoon. That message leaked soon after it was sent. It informed employees that those safe would get an email sent to their work accounts, and those impacted by layoffs would be let go via an email sent to their personal accounts. All of this was scheduled to be finished by midday Friday.
If losing your job via email wasn’t frigid enough, the memo was signed by “Twitter” — and not by the man in charge of making these decisions.
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Twitter was buzzing with layoff news as users began posting about it on Thursday, and by Friday morning it was all over social media. Worse yet: Many were informed of their layoff when they were unceremoniously kicked out of their work accounts overnight.
The tenor from current and former Twitter employees was a mix of gratitude for the time spent at the company and dismay at the end. After all, the end of their employment at the company can really only be traced back to one origin: Musk’s purchase.
The Tesla chief paid a hefty $44 billion for Twitter (by his own account, an obvious overpay), and he has apparently already scared off advertisers. He’s reportedly scrambling to gin up different monetization schemes — like paying for verification and paywalled video — that would be risky overhauls to the very nature of the platform.
In the lead-up to the takeover, most Twitter employees refrained from openly criticizing Musk himself, but there did seem to be an undercurrent of dismay at the whole saga. Following Friday’s layoffs, a tweet from James Glynn, the platform’s now former senior curation lead, was blunt about the future of the app.
“I feel sorry for anyone that didn’t get fired [to be honest],” Glynn wrote on Twitter. “Elon will run those left into the ground with his hair-brained ideas. Any kind of Twitter we knew before is dead.”
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Another employee, Emmanuel Cornet, a software engineer who made tongue-in-cheek cartoons about the company, noted that Musk and Twitter would almost certainly face legal pushback.
“Looking forward to the news articles about the bloodbath, and then the lawsuits,” they tweeted. Cornet was reportedly let go earlier in the week.
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Indeed, the legal proceedings have already begun. Five current or former Twitter employees have filed a lawsuit stating Musk and Twitter violated state and federal laws by not providing a required 60 days notice for mass layoffs, NBC News reported.
It has been, without a doubt, a stressful and strange month for Twitter employees amid the on-again-off-again-on-again nature of Musk’s bid for the company and eventual purchase. The notes from laid-off employees expressed their appreciation for their colleagues, even as the recent past hung heavy. The hashtag #lovewhereyouworked took off, a play on the company’s motto “love where you work.”
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Mashable reached out to more than a dozen current or former Twitter employees, most of whom either chose not to respond or declined to comment on the record on what is an understandably difficult day. The layoff memo sent to all employees also stated company policy prohibited them from discussing “confidential company information” with the press or on social media. Though one laid-off employee — who requested anonymity — said in a short chat that while these layoffs didn’t come as a total surprise following Musk’s takeover, no one expected “the sheer scale of it.” They called the entire experience “pretty chaotic.”
Still, some employees used the platform to express this chaos the best way they know how: Through memes. What is Twitter for if not masking bad vibes with humor? The saluting emoji, for instance, became a bit of an inside joke, used by Twitter employees as they signed off Slack on Thursday evening. They then took the emoji to Twitter as a goodbye to their teams and the platform they once knew.
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As one might expect, some Musk fans and right-wing types delighted in Twitter staffers losing their jobs. The overall sentiment online, however, seemed be a mix of disbelief and anticipation for what’s next.
And where the company goes from now is pretty uncertain. Musk has big changes planned, and he wants them done fast. Like fast fast. Verification badges could be for sale as early as Monday, Nov. 7, Bloomberg reported. Paywalled video might not be far behind.
Musk didn’t seem to take a moment of reflection for laying off scores of people. As the layoffs were underway, the billionaire tweeted about his disdain for small talk and even claimed “activist groups” hurt Twitter’s relationships with advertisers, resulting in the need for layoffs. His own post on his own site came with a context note from readers disagreeing with that assessment, since reports have noted advertisers are actually upset with the direction of the platform under Musk.
That direction still isn’t clear. Musk wants to monetize the app, but he’s also prone to shifting with the winds, firing off new ideas that may or may not be real priorities. All that’s clear is that the old Twitter is gone. The teardown is complete. The rebuild is uncertain.
