Twitter tells employees via e-mail today, Friday, whether they will be laid off, and it will also temporarily close its offices and prevent employees from accessing it, after a week of doubts about the company’s future under the new owner, Elon Musk, according to a Reuters report.
The social media company said via an email to its employees that it will alert them at 9 a.m. PT on Friday (12 p.m. EST, 16 p.m. UTC) about the staff reduction.
“In an effort to put Twitter on the right track, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” said the email sent on Thursday and seen by Reuters.
Musk, the world’s richest person, is looking to cut about 3,700 Twitter employees, about half of its workforce, as he seeks to cut costs and impose new work values, according to internal plans seen by Reuters this week.
The email stated that the company’s offices will be temporarily closed, by suspending employee entry permits, in order to “help ensure the safety of each employee, as well as Twitter systems and customer data.”
Chaos and confusion among Twitter employees
The company said that employees who are not affected by the layoffs will be notified via a work email.
The memo said that the laid-off employees will be notified of the next steps via their personal email.
Some employees posted tweets showing problems with their access to the company’s IT system, expressing nervousness and fear that the move was evidence that they had been laid off.
A user with SBkcrn who mentioned on his profile as a former Twitter manager tweeted, “Looks like I’m out of work. I’ve been logged out of my remote work laptop and removed from Slack (a program communication between employees).
A lawsuit against Twitter
A class action lawsuit was filed Thursday against Twitter by its employees, who argued that the company was conducting mass layoffs without 60 days’ notice, in violation of federal and California law.
The lawsuit also asked the San Francisco federal court to issue an injunction preventing Twitter from urging laid-off employees to sign documents without informing them of the case’s suspension.
Musk directed Twitter teams to find up to $1 billion in annual infrastructure cost savings, according to two people familiar with the matter and an internal Slack message cited by Reuters in its report.
Musk has already liquidated the company’s top ranks, fired its chief executive and chief financial and legal officials, and others, including those at the head of the company’s advertising, marketing, and human resources departments, have left over the past week.
Musk’s first week after owning Twitter was characterized by chaos and suspicion, and two company-wide meetings were scheduled, and then canceled hours later.
Employees told Reuters they are gathering information through media reports, private message groups, and anonymous forums.
The long-expected layoffs damaged Twitter’s culture of transparency, and many of its employees praised it, according to the same source.
Twitter emailed its employees on Thursday, “If you’re in an office or on your way to an office, please go home,” and shortly thereafter hundreds of them flocked to Slack channels to say goodbye to each other, two employees told Reuters.
