Social Media company, Twitter, is reported to have laid off at least 50 employees in another effort to cut its cost as advert revenue continues to plunge.
The layoffs implemented over the weekend came as the second since Elon Musk took over the company in October 2022.
The latest cuts affected multiple engineering teams, including those supporting advertising technology, the main Twitter app, and technical infrastructure to keep Twitter’s systems up and running, according to a report by The Information.
Since Elon Musk took over, Twitter’s staff strength is said to have shrunk by at least 70% as the first round of layoffs implemented by Musk affected about 3,700 employees of the company.
Cut off from communication: According to reports and posts by affected employees, many of the affected Twitter staff realised they had been sacked when they could not access the company’s communication platform, Slack.
- “Slack is gone so no one knows what is going on. People receive an email at 2 am on Saturday and access is cut immediately. This will go down as one of the most extreme layoffs in entire corporate history,” reads one post on Blind, an anonymous platform for verified workers.
The post went on to detail the extent of the layoffs: 50% in human relations, 60% in sales and marketing, 35% in engineering, 40% in finance, and 80% in project management. Employees have received one month’s severance, the poster said. However, Twitter has not released any official statement on the latest layoffs.
The Information’s report also noted that Twitter kicked off this round of layoffs by letting go of its ad sales staff on February 17.
A senior product manager, Martijn de Kuijper, tweeted that he found out about his lack of a job after being locked out of his email account.
- “Waking up to find I’ve been locked out of my email. Looks like I’m let go. Now my Revue journey is really over,” tweeted de Kuijper.
Meta may be next: Meanwhile, several reports have indicated that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is also planning another round of layoffs after cutting 11,000 staff last year. The jobs cuts at the tech giant are coming after Mark Zuckerberg had earlier assured workers that he was not anticipating more layoffs after the company slashed a huge amount of its employees last year in November.
According to reports, the new round of layoffs is said to “disproportionately” impact non-engineering roles and the company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg is seemingly deputizing human resources, lawyers, financial experts, and top executives to draw up plans to deflate the hierarchy within the company.
