Massive downsizing. A week after being bought by Elon Musk, Twitter has undertaken to lay off half of its employees, while launching major projects and battling against users, advertisers and associations worried about the transformation of the influential social network.
“Unfortunately, there is no other choice when the company is losing more than $4 million a day,” Elon Musk said in his first post on the subject, 24 hours after the first email sent by the company. “All those who lost their jobs were offered three months of compensation”, a figure “50% higher than the legal obligation”, he added.
“Mercenary Tactics”
Managers and marketing and design departments seem particularly affected, according to a recently laid off employee, who wished to remain anonymous. He fears that the new management will seek to find ways to withhold severance pay from ex-employees, finding pretexts to accuse them of professional misconduct. “It looks like mercenary tactics, they try to economize at all costs, to the point of treating people inhumanely,” he regrets.
Five recently fired Twitter employees filed a class action lawsuit against the company overnight Thursday, claiming they had not received the 60-day notice period required by US law for layoffs massive (Warn Act). One of them, Frenchman Emmanuel Cornet, was fired for professional misconduct without explanation, despite being among the top 5-10% of the company’s engineers, according to lists compiled this week.
A business overhaul
Elon Musk brought in Tesla developers to assess the work of Twitter employees. He also quickly launched the overhaul of several products, including the paid subscription and the account authenticity verification system, and imposed a sustained pace. The change in corporate culture is therefore confirmed – several executives resigned this week and more than 700 people have already left this summer, of their own free will, according to an employee.
“We are witnessing the destruction in real time of one of the most powerful communication systems in the world. Elon Musk is an unpredictable and inconsistent billionaire, he represents a danger for this platform which he is not qualified to lead”, reacted Nicole Gill, co-founder of Accountable Tech, one of the NGOs which called on advertisers to do pressure on the new boss.