Twitter lets go of 200 of its employees in latest round of cuts
The New York Times recently reports that social media giant Twitter has surprisingly (but not surprisingly) laid off at least 200 staff in another round of cuts.
The publication stated that the tech giant had cut 10% of its current workforce, now estimated at 2,000 people. This falls as the latest round of job losses at Twitter since newly-seated chief executive Elon Musk got rid of about 50% of its 7,500 employees when he took over in October.
As staff had the knowledge of this, Elon tweeted, “Hope you have a good Sunday. First day of the rest of your life.”
Meanwhile, in a tweet from the chief executive of Twitter Payments Esther Crawford who oversaw the Twitter Blue verification subscription model, she said she was “deeply proud of my team” after being among those let go.
In addition, senior product manager Martijn de Kuijper, who founded newsletter tool Revue which Twitter acquired in 2021, has stated that he found out he had lost his job in a more interesting way and that is after being locked out of his work emails.
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 🫡
— Martijn (@mdekuijper) February 26, 2023
The cuts Twitter is making are the latest in numerous sets of lay-offs in the tech industry over the past few months. Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet (owned by Google) announced tens of thousands of layoffs between them. However, the cuts across the industry are wide-reaching.
The Twitter cuts come a month after Reuters reported the firm had made its first interest payment on a bank loan used by Elon to finance the purchase.
Meanwhile, there are further indications that the tech company is struggling with financing.
In this month’s World Government Summit in Dubai, Elon said, “I think I need to stabilize the organization and just make sure it’s in a financially healthy place. I’m guessing probably towards the end of this year would be good timing to find someone else to run the company, because I think it should be in a stable position around the end of this year.”
