According to a report from The Washington Post, Elon Musk plans to lay off 75% of Twitter staff if he takes over the company. In fact, job cuts are expected in the coming months, regardless of who owns the company, based on the report. This report does cite interviews and documents, by the way.
Elon Musk seemingly plans to lay off 75% of Twitter staff if he takes over
The source says that “Elon Musk told prospective investors in his deal to buy the company that he planned to get rid of nearly 75 percent of Twitter’s 7,500 workers”. That means that around 2,000 people would be left in the company, well, barely over that number.
If the deal falls through in the end, which is highly unlikely, layoffs are expected. It is said that Twitter’s current management planned to lower the company’s payroll by about $800 million by the end of 2023.
In translation, that means that nearly a quarter of Twitter’s workforce would be fired. That’s not as drastic as 75% that Elon Musk allegedly plans to lay off, but it’s still a lot of people.
The Washington Post took this information from “corporate documents and interviews with people familiar with the company’s deliberations”.
We may also see major cuts to Twitter’s infrastructure
On top of these layoffs, the company seems to want to make major cuts to its infrastructure. That goes for data centers that keep the site going. As a reminder, Twitter has over 200 million daily users.
The Washington Post believes that these layoffs are one of the reasons why Twitter’s officials are so eager to sell the company. They want to avoid the whole process, which could potentially hurt the company quite a bit.
Those layoffs may considerably affect misinformation, hate speech, and spam
Misinformation, hate speech, and spam have become a major issue these days. Twitter is constantly fighting with all three, and if it loses a ton of its workers, that fight will become even more difficult.
Twitter’s top layer, Sean Edgett, sent out a note to Twitter employees on Thursday evening. He said that the company does not have any confirmation from Musk about his plans for the company. Twitter’s own smaller-scale “cost savings discussions” were put on hold, Edgett said. This is based on an email viewed by The Post.
It is said that Twitter and Elon Musk are expected to close the purchase by next Friday. So, we’re expecting more news to come in soon.