Seven days after the $44 billion takeover, new owner Elon Musk had cut every second job at the company.
(Photo: AP)
san francisco The management team around Elon Musk should ask the first laid-off employees to return to work. The news agency Bloomberg, the medium Insider and the technology service Platformer reported unanimously.
Dozens of professionals have been contacted asking them to return to work on Twitter, Bloomberg said, citing people familiar with the matter. Some employees were “accidentally” fired. Others were fired before management realized their work and experience might be necessary to develop the new features Musk envisions, the insiders said, according to Bloomberg.
A former employee who was responsible for a critical part of Twitter’s technical infrastructure warned the Handelsblatt on Friday of massive failures on the platform. He had said: “There will be massive outages on Twitter. The question is no longer if, but how bad it will be.”
Insider confirmed that at least five people had been asked back to work. “These people are essential for the functioning of the Twitter ecosystem,” the portal quoted an insider as saying. At least one ex-Twitter employee turned down the offer, saying he “feels taken advantage of and believes he will be fired again soon,” the outlet wrote.
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Musk had fired every second person on Twitter
The new management team around Elon Musk had laid off around half of the 7,500 employees at Twitter on Friday. Musk had argued, “Unfortunately, if the company is losing over $4 million a day, the company has no choice.” Laying employees would receive three months’ salary, Musk wrote.
The remaining team at Twitter is working to roll out new features at a rapid pace. An update for a new paid subscription was provided on Saturday. Every paying customer will receive a verification tag for $7.99. In the future, fewer ads, longer videos and preferred placement for answers will also be among the additional services for paying customers.
However, the New York Times reported that the purchase of verification badges would not be introduced until after the end of the US midterm elections. The newspaper quoted an internal corporate communication.
Accordingly, in an internal discussion, a Twitter employee asked why the social network was “making such a risky change before the election that has the potential to affect the elections”. A manager working on the verification badge project responded Sunday that “we have made the decision to delay the launch of this version until November 9, after the election,” the New York Times article said .
Media report: Meta soon wants to cut a number of jobs
Within the next few days there could also be layoffs at the Facebook group Meta. The Wall Street Journal reported that many of the company’s 87,000 jobs are about to be cut. It would be the first job cuts at the company in 18 years. In front of analysts, company boss Mark Zuckerberg recently said: “Overall, we assume that by the end of 2023 we will either be about the same size or even slightly smaller than today.”
Meta had recently built up a lot of staff. More than 27,000 employees were hired in 2020 and 2021. Another 15,344 were added in the first nine months of this year.
More: “It’s pure chaos” – that’s how the mass layoffs went on Twitter.