Twitter is preparing for layoffs, regardless of Elon Musk’s purchase of the company. That could happen as quickly as Friday according To A report from The Washington Post.
Musk told potential investors that he will axe 75 per cent of Twitter’s 7,500-member workforce upon closing the deal. This would likely cause a major disruption to the site’s operations, as well as limiting its ability to manage content and protect users’ privacy. However, internal documents obtained from Musk show that they are not averse to the possibility. The PostAccording to Musk, the current company leadership had planned to “pare” the company’s payroll by $800 million prior to the Musk deal. This would be a modest 25% reduction in the workforce, leaving only 1,900 unemployed. There would also be “major” infrastructure cuts, and closures of data centers.
Musk’s cuts would be “unimaginable” Edwin Chen, a data scientist formerly in charge of Twitter’s spam and health metrics, told The Post. “It would be a cascading effect,” he said, “where you’d have services going down and the people remaining not having the institutional knowledge to get them back up, and being completely demoralized and wanting to leave themselves.”
Musk defended staffing cuts when he was asked about possible layoffs during a Twitter Town Hall meeting. He said that he couldn’t understand why workers with low performance would be laid off. Should remain employed. Musk also supported loosening content moderation and allowing accounts that were previously banned to be reactivated.
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