November 07, 2022, 03:03 PM
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Twitter has been firing employees en masse since Elon Musk took over the social media company.
Musk reportedly told investors he planned to lay off as much as 75 per cent of Twitter’s 7,500-person strong workforce.
The layoffs subsequently affected half of the company's workforce, according to a tweet by Twitter's head of safety and integrity.
Yesterday’s reduction in force affected approximately 15% of our Trust & Safety organization (as opposed to approximately 50% cuts company-wide), with our front-line moderation staff experiencing the least impact.
— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) November 4, 2022
Employees in the Singapore office were not spared as well.
Asking to come back
In a baffling turn of events, Twitter is now reaching out to "dozens" of employees who have been fired and asking them to return, Bloomberg reported on Nov. 7.
According to the report, people "familiar with the move" shared that some of those asked to return were laid off "by mistake".
Meanwhile, others were let go before management belatedly realised their work and experience might be necessary for the projects Musk had envisioned moving forward.
Twitter's plan to hire back was also revealed in a Nov. 6 tweet by Casey Newton, the founder and editor of tech media site Platformer.
Multiple sources and Twitter Blind chats now saying that the company has begun to reach out to some people it laid off yesterday asking them to come back. Whoops! 🥴
— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) November 6, 2022
Newton claimed that a message sent over the weekend to Twitter's internal messaging programme Slack shared that the company has "the opportunity to ask folks that were left off if they will come back".
From Twitter Slack: “sorry to @- everybody on the weekend but I wanted to pass along that we have the opportunity to ask folks that were left off if they will come back. I need to put together names and rationales by 4PM PST Sunday.
— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) November 6, 2022
"The requests for employees to return demonstrate how rushed and chaotic the process was," Bloomberg wrote.
Twitter did not reply to Bloomberg's request for comment.
Laid off via email
Nearly 3,700 people have been laid off this week via email, and employees only realised they were fired after their access to company-wide systems like email and Slack were suspended, reported Bloomberg.
According to Reuters, teams responsible for communications, content curation, human rights, machine learning ethics, and some product and engineering teams were among those who had their staff count slashed.
On Nov. 5, Musk elaborated on the supposed reasons behind the layoffs.
Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2022
Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required.
Top photo from Unsplash and Pool / Getty Images
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