The arrival of Elon Musk at the head of Twitter was followed by a restructuring carried out on November 4. About 50% of the staff have been let go.
” My time at Twitter is over », testifies Arnaud Weber, former vice-president of the engineering department within the social network. Like so many others, he is a victim of the restructuring imposed by Elon Musk, now the sole master on board. As expected, approximately 50% of employees were laid off, which still represents thousands of people. Before the acquisition of the billionaire, Twitter relied on a workforce of 7,500 people.
The few testimonies of former employees are perfectly summarized by Tony Haile, also thanked. He explains : ” It’s a strange day, people, no matter which side of the 50% they’re on, don’t know whether to be sickened or grateful. I know I’m honored to have spent time with amazing people, who have shown so much caring for each other. » Shannon Raj Singhwho worked in Human Resources, shares the same pride, when Michele Austin says to himself ” devastated ” and ” in denial “.
“It’s going to be the sh*t”
Elon Musk did not take a lot of tweezers with this great upheaval, and some ex-employees became aware of their fate long before receiving the fateful email (on Friday morning). As Business Insider reports, they suddenly lost access to their work account. ” Looks like I’m no longer employed. I just got kicked out of my computer session and removed from Slack », was astonished Simon Balmain in a tweet posted on November 4 (November 3 in the US time zone).
Elon Musk obviously justified this restructuring by brandishing the financial argument. In a tweet posted on November 5he assures : ” Regarding Twitter’s downsizing, unfortunately, there’s no choice when a company is losing $4 million a day. “Good prince, he reminds us that all those made redundant will leave with three months of indemnities — “ 50% more than the law provides “.
According to information from The Verge published on November 4, certain areas of the company are more affected than others: moderation, communication, curation of tweets, AI, data analysis, research, machine learning, social innovation, accessibility and certain purely technical teams. The survivors, amputated of several colleagues at once, expect to live dark days and fear the worst for the maintenance of the infrastructures. ” It’s gonna be sh*t “Blows one of them, on condition of anonymity. On the question of moderation and a potential increase in insufficiently censored messages, Elon Musk reassures: “ To be fully transparent, Twitter’s commitment to content moderation remains unchanged. “. It relies on comments by Yoel Rothat the head of the Trust & Safety department: “ Although we have said goodbye to talented colleagues and friends, our capacity for moderation remains intact.. »
In the email received by those who remain, we can read that Elon Musk will share very soon ” his vision for the company “. In the meantime, they are reminded not to share confidential information on social networks or in the press.
