After roughly 50% of the Twitter workforce was laid off on Friday following Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition, the bird company is now reportedly approaching dozens of employees so they can get back to work.
According to a report by Bloomberg, some of the returnees were accidentally released.
Some were shown the door before the new management realized their work might be necessary to develop the new features for the short-form online platform Musk wants.
After half the company was laid off on Friday, a select number of former Twitter employees are being recalled to their positions – some reportedly fired inadvertently
Musk previously said there was no choice but to impose mass layoffs as the company loses hundreds of millions of dollars each year and needs a financial overhaul
In a move that had been expected for weeks, Twitter cut nearly 3,700 jobs via email on Friday. Many employees learned their jobs had been terminated after their access to company systems like Slack and email was abruptly cut off.
On Friday night, Musk tweeted, “Unfortunately, when the company is losing over $4 million a day, there is no other choice.”
“Each who left was offered a three-month severance package, which is 50% more than the law requires,” he wrote.
Musk has previously alluded to a determination to improve the company’s financial health, which would almost certainly involve massive layoffs.
The company still has around 3,700 employees. Those that remain are being pushed by Musk to work quickly to develop and implement new features.
There are reports of employees sleeping in the office — something Musk himself has been known to do — to meet newly imposed deadlines.
The firing and reinstatement frenzy is taking place amid a slew of new features the Vogel app plans to roll out soon — including the blue tick subscription program
Change is coming fast and furious as the world’s richest man took his position as CEO of Twitter. His deal to buy the company for a whopping $44 billion was completed in late October.
Over the weekend, Twitter rolled out the new Twitter Blue subscription plan, which offers the verification tick for any user willing to pay more than $8 a month.
The company — largely through Musk’s personal account — said it will soon be rolling out additional new features, including reduced ads, the ability to post longer videos, and a feature that allows users to prioritize replies, mentions, and searches .
On Sunday, The New York Times reported that the company would delay changes to its blue check program until after Tuesday’s midterm elections.
Staffers reportedly made the point that any abrupt change could be used to wreak havoc on the site in the days leading up to the election.
According to Silicon Valley reporter Casey Newton, employees who remained on the Twitter Slack channel after Friday were asked over the weekend to provide “names and reasons” for former employees who might still be of use to the company.
Twitter has not yet commented on its decision to bring back some of those fired on Friday.
Musk is quickly implementing big changes at Twitter — although the speed of that change could be hampered by his decision to halve the company’s workforce
For the past few days, Musk’s own tweets have been half-truth, leaking out of Twitter headquarters, the billionaire publicly mulling over how to change the product and mocking some of his high-profile critics.
Musk tweeted a “hot attitude” after criticism from notable progressives like New York Congressman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and actor Mark Ruffalo.
“Not everything AOC says is 100% correct,” he wrote in response to a statement by Ruffalo.
A day earlier, Ruffalo tweeted: “Elon. Please, for the sake of decency, exit Twitter, hand the keys to someone who actually does, and move on with Tesla and SpaceX.
“You destroy your credibility. It just doesn’t look good,” he added.
On Saturday, Twitter CEO Elon Musk responded to Mark Ruffalo on Twitter, telling the actor not to “believe everything AOC says.”
Also over the weekend, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey came forward to apologize to current and former Twitter employees.
Addressing the acquisition of Musk, which he previously supported, he apologized for saying the company had grown “too fast” and said Twitter employees “will always find a way, no matter how difficult the moment.” .
The co-founder rolled his 18 million shares into the Elon Musk-era company rather than receiving a payout. His shares correspond to approximately 2.4 percent of the shares in the company.
That means he’ll be one of Twitter’s biggest investors in the company, having contributed around $1 billion to Musk’s $44 billion purchase.
As part of his acquisition, Musk dissolved Twitter’s board of directors almost immediately after buying the company, leaving Dorsey as one of the few shareholders with ties to previous leadership.
He joins Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and the Investment Authority of Qatar as key investors.
Dorsey faced backlash over his decision to leave Twitter in 2021 to work on his payments company Block, formerly known as Square. He co-founded the company in 2006, was ousted from the top position in 2008 and returned in 2015. The app went public in 2015.
He addressed the ill wishes in a subsequent tweet: “I am grateful and love everyone who has ever worked on Twitter. I don’t expect that to be mutual right now…or ever…and I get it.’
Court documents revealed that Dorsey had contacted Musk and discussed the company’s direction.
“A new platform is needed. It can’t be a company. That’s why I left,” he wrote to Musk.
When Musk asked him what the new model would look like, Dorsey replied that Twitter “never should have been the company” and that it was the “original sin.”
“I think it’s worth both trying to take Twitter in a better direction and doing something new that’s decentralized,” he said.
“Elon is the unique solution I trust,” Dorsey said in an April 2022 tweet. “I trust his mission to expand the light of consciousness.”