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Among the thousands of employees laid off on Friday, Elon Musk laid off engineers, communicators but also employees responsible for fighting online hate. Which causes advertisers to flee, weakening his new toy to $44 billion.
When the screeching of the thrush ceases, the cawing of the crow sounds. Over the weekend, Twitter was filled with farewell messages written in multiple languages by emotional staff. “I’m devastated that it ended like this,” laments Tina Le, head of the company’s California headquarters. Communicators, engineers in artificial intelligence, data science, machine learning… 50% of the company’s 7,500 employees were fired via email on Friday. And some teams have sometimes been dropped entirely from the org chart of Elon Musk’s new $44 billion toy.
It’s been an incredible (almost) 5 years on Twitter and I’m heartbroken that it’s ending like this.
Thank you to all the tweeps for making this place feel like home. Our tweep culture is often imitated but NEVER duplicated.
OneTeam love runs deep!#LoveWhereYouWorked 🫡 pic.twitter.com/uLmx1GlHmv
— Tina Le (@tunap00) November 4, 2022
“It was a wonderful time,” tweeted Ren Suzuki, a former Japanese employee who was laid off after seven months of work. 7,400 kilometers away, Michel Austin, head of public order, from Canada, collapsed: “I am heartbroken. I deny it.” Amidst the rumblings, and while some are announcing a collective lawsuit, the Tesla CEO explained his decision in less than 280 characters. “The company loses more than