After dismissing nearly half of its employees by email, the Twitter firm contacted several dozen employees who had been dismissed to ask them to return. Management explains that some layoffs had been announced “by mistake”.
It is a particularly violent layoff plan that has aroused strong reactions: a week after being bought by Elon Musk, Twitter had undertaken to lay off half of its workforce, while launching large-scale projects and battling against the users, advertisers and associations worried about the transformation of the influential social network. “About 50% of the staff” has been affected by the ongoing layoffs within Twitter, according to a document sent to employees of the social network. Result: the Californian company, which had nearly 7,500 employees at the end of October, temporarily closed its offices and notified thousands of people by email, explaining that the goal was “to improve the health of the company”.
And then the change of gear. According to the media Bloomberg News, the company contacted dozens of employees who lost their jobs to finally ask them to come back. Twitter says several employees were fired “by mistake”. Other employees would have been fired “before management realized that their work and experience might be needed to create the new features” envisioned by Elon Musk.
A loss of 4 million dollars a day
Whoever bought the social network had previously said that these layoffs were necessary: ”Unfortunately there is no other choice when the company is losing more than 4 million dollars a day” declared Elon Musk in his first message on the subject, 24 hours after the first email sent by the company.
“All those who lost their jobs were offered three months of compensation.” By last Thursday, when the richest man in the world took control of the company, he had dissolved the board of directors, fired the executives, assumed the position of chief executive and took the company off the stock exchange.