A spokesman for Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Elon Musk plans to cut about 3,700 jobs at Twitter Inc., or half the social media company’s workforce, to cut costs following its $44 billion acquisition, according to people familiar with the matter.
Twitter’s new owner intends to notify affected employees on Friday, said the people, who asked not to be identified to discuss non-public plans. Musk also intends to reverse the company’s existing work-from-anywhere policy and ask remaining employees to report to offices — though some exceptions could be made, the people said.
Musk and a team of consultants have been weighing a number of scenarios for job cuts and other policy changes at San Francisco-based Twitter, the people said, adding that the terms of the downsizing are still subject to change. In one scenario being considered, laid-off workers will be offered 60 days’ worth of severance pay, two of the people said.
A spokesman for Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk is under pressure to find ways to cut costs at a company he says he overpaid for. The billionaire agreed to pay $54.20 a share in April as markets plummeted. He then spent months trying to get out of the transaction, claiming the company misled him about the proliferation of fake accounts. Twitter sued to force Musk to honor his agreement, and in recent weeks Musk relented, resigning himself to completing the deal on the agreed terms. The take-private deal closed on Thursday.
Twitter employees have braced for layoffs since Musk took over and immediately ousted much of the top executive team, including chief executive officer Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal, and senior legal staff Vijaya Gadde and Sean Edgett. In the days that followed, Chief Marketing Officer Leslie Berland, Chief Customer Officer Sarah Personette, and Vice President of Global Client Solutions Jean-Philippe Maheu left the company, among others.
Musk anointed himself “Chief Twit” in his bio on the social network. Bloomberg had previously reported that he himself would take on the role of interim CEO. He also dissolved the company’s board of directors and became the sole director, later saying it was “only temporary”.
Some staff with director and vice presidential positions were cut over the weekend, people familiar with the matter said. Other executives have been asked to make lists of employees on their teams who could be cut, the people said.
Senior product teams have been asked to target a 50% headcount reduction, a person familiar with the matter said this week. Engineers and director-level employees at Tesla Inc., the automaker also owned by Musk, reviewed the lists, the person said. Layoff lists were created and ranked based on individuals’ contributions to the Twitter Code during their time with the company, the people said. The assessment was made by both Tesla employees and Twitter executives.
Concerns about drastic job cuts began circulating in the run-up to Musk’s acquisition, when potential investors were told he would be shedding 75% of the company’s workforce, which stood at about 7,500 at the end of 2021. Musk later denied these cuts would be so deep.
In recent weeks, Musk began to indicate his staffing priorities, saying he wants to focus on the core product. “Software engineering, server operations & design will dominate the district,” he tweeted in early October.
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