Twitter employees brace for layoffs today as Elon Musk's takeover continues

 

Twitter employees were bracing for significant layoffs on Friday as new owner Elon Musk restructured the social site.

Employees would find out if they had been laid off by 9 a.m. Pacific Standard Time, according to a letter acquired by numerous media sources. The communication did not specify how many individuals will be laid off.

Some employees reported losing access to their work accounts as early as Friday. The memo to employees stated that job cuts were "essential to guarantee the company's success moving ahead."

Since Musk took over as CEO, Twitter's roughly 7,500 employees had been anticipating layoffs. On his first day as Twitter's owner, the billionaire Tesla CEO sacked key staffers, including CEO Parag Agrawal.

He also replaced the company's board of directors with himself as the only member. On Thursday night, many Twitter employees went to the social network to show their support for one another, frequently sending blue heart emoticons to represent Twitter's blue bird emblem and salute emojis in answers.

As of Thursday, Musk and Twitter had made no public announcements about the impending layoffs. Despite the fact that the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act requires firms with at least 100 employees to announce layoffs affecting 500 or more employees, whether the company is publicly listed or privately held.

According to Barry C. White, a representative for California's Employment Development Department, the department has not recently received such notices from Twitter.

On Thursday, a class action complaint was filed in federal court in San Francisco on behalf of one laid-off employee and three others who were locked out of their work accounts. It claims Twitter wants to lay off additional staff and has broken the law by failing to provide the proper notice.

The cutbacks come at a difficult moment for social media businesses, as advertisers cut back and newcomers, like TikTok, challenge the older generation of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

Facebook's parent company, Meta Platforms Inc., has reported its second quarterly revenue decrease in history, and its shares are trading at their lowest levels since 2015. Meta's negative results came on the heels of poor financial announcements from Alphabet, Google's parent company, and even Microsoft.