Those who keep their jobs will be notified in company emails. Those who have lost them will be informed via their personal emails.
“Teams, we will go through the difficult process of reducing the global workforce on Friday in order to put Twitter on a healthy path,” the email said. “We recognize that this will impact the many individuals who make valuable contributions to Twitter, but unfortunately this action is necessary to ensure the success of the company moving forward.”
Anyone who did not receive the email by 5pm PT was told to contact the company. The office will be closed on Friday.
“We acknowledge that this was a very challenging experience, whether you were affected or not,” the email continued. “We appreciate your contribution to Twitter and your patience as we work through this process.”
This is the first time Musk’s team has formally communicated with his employees company-wide.
team,
In order to put Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of laying off our global workforce on Friday. We recognize that this will affect the many individuals who make valuable contributions to Twitter, but unfortunately this action is necessary to ensure the success of the company moving forward.
Given the nature of our dispersed workforce and our desire to notify affected individuals as quickly as possible, communication for this process will be via email. Friday, November at 9AM PST. 4. Everyone will receive a personal email with the subject line: Your role on Twitter. Please check your email, including your spam folder.
If your work is not affected, you will be notified via Twitter email.
If your work is affected, you will be notified via personal email with next steps.
If you don’t receive an email from twitter-hr@ by 5pm PST on Friday, November. 4. Please email peoplequestions@twitter.com.
To help ensure the security of every employee and Twitter’s systems and customer data, our offices are temporarily closed and all badge access is suspended. If you are at the office or on your way to the office, go home.
We acknowledge that this has been an extremely challenging experience whether you are affected or not. Thank you for continuing to abide by Twitter’s policy prohibiting you from discussing confidential company information on social media, with the media, or elsewhere.
We appreciate your contribution to Twitter and your patience as we work through this process.
Thank you.
—Email obtained by The Washington Post
In response to the email, dozens of Twitter employees posted a blue heart saying goodbye to their colleagues. The same hearts are posted one after the other in the long roll of the company’s Slack.
Twitter and Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Musk is under pressure to recoup investments in plots he admitted to overpaying. After taking ownership of Twitter last week after striking a $44 billion deal to buy the site this spring, he intends to back out of the acquisition and then renegotiate the deal as a trial date in a court battle looms.
Analysts put Twitter’s actual value at nearly $25 billion. Musk also took out more than $12 billion in loans to buy the site, according to financial filings, putting pressure on him to cut costs and stay solvent — a debt that carries about $1 billion in annual interest payments.
Musk is the CEO of the new company. His deputies include his lawyer Alex Spiro, investor David Sacks and Jared Birchall, who manages Musk’s family office.
The layoffs came after a week-long review of Twitter, in which Musk and his lieutenants imposed a product freeze, halted development on Twitter’s internal projects, allowed Tesla engineers to review Twitter’s code, and put workers on the go. An information vacuum waits anxiously for company direction and leadership.
Musk is expected to go ahead with plans to cut about 50% of Twitter’s workforce, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named.
Musk began his tenure at Twitter a week ago by ousting former executives, including the CEO, CFO and general counsel.
The layoffs starting Friday are expected to affect sales, trust and safety, marketing, product, engineering and legal teams – across the board for the company.
In addition to the layoffs, Musk is expected to slash other parts of the business — so large that employees worry about the ability to keep Twitter running, according to internal documents seen by The Washington Post and people familiar with the matter . The plan, which declined to be named for fear of reprisals.
In a message sent to engineers this week, managers asked employees for proposals to find at least $500 million in annual cost cuts across the company, according to documents and people familiar with the matter. Cuts will include the data centers and other software infrastructure needed to run the site, as well as contract labor to perform content moderation for Twitter.
Amid reports of imminent layoffs earlier Thursday, Twitter employees braced for what seemed inevitable, updating their internal tools, such as the messaging app, to stay up-to-date — due to the prospect of losing their jobs Sex is imminent.
But information remained sparse until the emails arrived later in the day.
In Twitter’s offices, employees said goodbye in tears, exchanged contact information and tried to make their files easily accessible to those who remained.
They want to make sure their colleagues can keep the site running in their absence.
Before Musk took over the site, Twitter was already planning massive layoffs that would affect as many as a quarter of its workforce, according to people familiar with the matter. The Post previously reported that the company’s board of directors plans to cut thousands of jobs to save $700 million in labor costs.
Will Oremus, Cat Zakrzewski and Elizabeth Dwoskin contributed to this report.