The new owner, Elon Musk, plans to eliminate the positions of 50% of the workforce, or 3,750 employees concerned.
Bought by Elon Musk last week, Twitter began a global wave of layoffs on Friday, which could see its payroll halved, and announced to employees the temporary closure of its offices. “To help ensure the safety of every employee and that of Twitter’s systems and data, our offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended.“, said the Californian company Thursday in an internal email consulted by AFP.
The message indicates to employees that they will be informed by email whether their job is eliminated or not, without specifying the number of positions concerned. According to the Washington Post, Elon Musk plans to lay off around 50% of the group’s approximately 7,500 employees. As soon as he took power, he had dissolved the board of directors and fired the general manager and other senior officials. Shortly after the layoffs were announced, Twitter employees took to the social network to announce their job cuts, sometimes using the hashtags #LoveWhereYouWork and #OneTeam. ).
Read alsoTakeover of Twitter by Musk: bad or good news for freedom of expression?
“Has it already started? Happy layoff day“Launched Thursday evening Rumman Chowdhury, who presents himself on LinkedIn as director of ethics in artificial learning at Twitter, accompanying his publication with a screenshot showing that access to his professional email was denied to him. “All my thoughts, respect, energy and love to the tweeps around the world today. We’ve built the most amazing app on the planet together“, for his part wrote Friday Damien Viel, the general manager of Twitter France. Overnight Thursday, five recently fired Twitter employees filed a class action lawsuit against the company for not receiving the 60-day notice period required by US law for layoffs. massive (Warn Act), according to the text of the complaint consulted by AFP.
“Anything !”
To finance his takeover at 44 billion dollars, the tempestuous billionaire heavily indebted the company whose financial health was already fragile since it recorded a significant deficit in the first two quarters of the year. Elon Musk has thus contracted loans amounting to 13 billion dollars, which will have to be repaid by Twitter and not by the boss of Tesla. He also sold about $15.5 billion of his shares in the electric car maker in two waves, in April and August, and backed loans worth $12.5 billion to his Tesla securities.
On Friday, Elon Musk blamed Twitter’s revenue slump on “a group of activists who put pressure on advertisers even though nothing has changed with the moderation of content and we have done everything to appease the activists“. “It’s complete rubbish! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America“, added the bubbling fifties. Elon Musk must indeed face the concern of many advertisers, who wonder about the risks of a relaxation of the moderation of content and a greater place given to hate or violent speech.
Several groups have already decided to suspend advertising spending on Twitter, including the American agribusiness giant General Mills, the American car manufacturer General Motors and its German competitor Volkswagen. One of the main ideas put forward by Mr. Musk since its acquisition is the establishment of an 8 dollar per month subscription allowing users to have their account certified, to be less exposed to advertising and to benefit from various advantages. However, this project has raised many criticisms and caution, especially among users who already have an authenticated account.