Twitter lays off about half its staff, sending a “Your Role at Twitter” email to their company account for those staying and personal account for those leaving
which was maybe ~80-100 people — is down to just two people after layoffs today.... Will Oremus / @willoremus : Here's the first official communication from Twitter's new leadership to its staff, a week after Musk took over: a fun game where you get to find out if you're laid off or not based by 9am tomorrow, based on whether the email pops up in your Twitter account or personal account. https://t.co/tpJsAkiaHp Lisa Bloom / @lisabloom : Hey Twitter employees getting laid off tomorrow! IMPORTANT INFO from a CA employment attorney (me): CA's “WARN” law requires Twitter to give you 60 days notice of a massive layoff. A layoff of 50+ employees within a 30 day period qualifies. I know you didn't get that notice. Joan Deitchman / @joandeitchman : Probably my last Twitter Slack message. The ML Ethics, Transparency, & Accountability team was one of a kind. Forever grateful that @ruchowdh took a chance on me and I got to be a small part of it. 🙏💙 #lovewhereyouworked https://twitter.com/... Chris Younie / @chrisyounie : Well this isn't looking promising. Can't log into emails. Mac wont turn on. But so grateful this is happening at 3am. Really appreciate the thoughtfulness on the timing front guys. Meanwhile to everyone else at Twitter, you're the best ❤️ #OneTeam https://twitter.com/... Sheon Han / @sheonhan : My employee login @Twitter vs. Lettuce Let's goooooooooo https://twitter.com/... @yashagarwalm : Just got laid off. Bird App, it was an absolute honour, the greatest privilege ever to be a part of this team, this culture 🫡💙 #LoveWhereYouWorked #LoveTwitter https://twitter.com/... Kurt Wagner / @kurtwagner8 : Hearing that some of those who are being laid off from Twitter are pregnant. And they don't know what severance or insurance coverage they'll have moving forward. Just so much uncertainty right now on top of losing your job... Ben Collins / @oneunderscore__ : Employees in Twitter just got an email from their bosses saying layoffs are coming tomorrow. Those who are staying will get a note tomorrow in their work email. Those who are let go will get an email sent to their personal address. Slot machine-style layoffs. Kate Conger / @kateconger : Twitter has finally filed a WARN notice for mass layoffs https://twitter.com/... Ben Collins / @oneunderscore__ : The entire “Ethics, Transparency, & Accountability” team at Twitter is gone, if you want a sense for where the site is headed. https://twitter.com/... Dick Costolo / @dickc : Our team at 01 Advisors put together this community a couple weeks ago to help the Twitter Alumni Network stay connected as a large number of folks work to figure out what's next. It's active and productive and has already been a great resource for people https://md15q1upti9.typeform.com/ ... Chris O'Brien / @obrien : Twitter lays off about 900 in Bay Area after Elon Musk takeover: official state report https://www.mercurynews.com/ ... Richie Assaly / @rdassaly : Looks like Elon Musk fired the entire curation team. These were the folks who tackled misinfo, contextualized conversations via the ‘Explore’ page, and helped make Twitter an unmatched source for breaking news. This will make Twitter noisier, more dangerous & less interesting Scott Nover / @scottnover : Elon Musk's offer to buy Twitter was so outlandishly high that a.) Twitter's old board couldn't say no, b.) Musk himself couldn't afford it, and c.) it damned the entire company to significant debt and massive layoffs. Every part of this deal has been and continues to be stupid. @mattdpearce : Twitter is the ad-dependent print newspaper bought out by private equity that now needs to service its debt, and the first order of business is to sell off the real estate, lay off staff, hike subscription costs and hope the core customer base doesn't notice everything is worse. Elon Musk / @elonmusk : Regarding Twitter's reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance. Monika Bauerlein / @monikabauerlein : it's like you programmed a “make money in media” bot and at startup it rapid cycles through every tried and failed idea of the past 30 years https://twitter.com/... Elizabeth Dwoskin / @lizzadwoskin : Twitter's internal slack right now is one long stream of blue one team hearts - the symbol of goodbye Lea Kissner / @leakissner : I am so fiercely proud of the privacy, security, and IT teams at Twitter. I've seen you do great work and get really good at getting that great work done in the face of enormous challenges. No matter what happens I've been so lucky. Thank you. Just like always, I'm here for you. Biz Stone / @biz : We were always “people first” at Twitter. The folks around us were funny, smart, creative, and kind. Thank you to all the Tweeps! Sar Haribhakti / @sarthakgh : Any leadership team not owning this admittedly very difficult decision and avoiding to take decent communication actions is simply cowardice. No excuses. The buck stops with the leaders in both good and bad times. There's a reason they are the leaders! Nikki Mccann Ramírez / @nikkimcr : just so were all clear, Musk is firing half of Twitter's staff, including huge swaths of their content moderation capability, four days before opening up identity-confirmation-free verification to the whole website which will happen...the day before a national election. Jason Schreier / @jasonschreier : Haha epic memeing one thousand internet points for you sir https://twitter.com/... @melcolmruffin : Lol @jack real quiet @jaseemabid : Woke up to no slack/gmail/office access and laptop remotely wiped out. Got fired without even a confirmation email while sleeping? There is always a new low. #twitter Nick Percoco / @c7five : After what we learned about the lack of basic security hygiene at Twitter and the telegraphing that today was coming, I'm genuinely curious how @elonmusk is balancing the risk that multiple reverse shells haven't been planted by 1 of the 1000s outgoing Engineering team members. Ben Collins / @oneunderscore__ : Cosmically stupid or historically malicious? It's the unanswered, constantly repeating question of our time. @hunterwalk : ok, so the three largest US social platforms are now owned by Elon,China, and Zuck Mark hasn't looked this good since Jesse Eisenberg @wiredbusiness : As part of a wave of layoffs, the new CEO disbanded a group working to make Twitter's algorithms more transparent and fair. https://www.wired.com/... Emily Katleman / @emilyettel : 9 years and 1 week. It's been a ride. Forever grateful for the friendships and life lessons learned along the way. Once a Tweep, forever a Tweep. #lovewhereyouworked https://twitter.com/... @martinsfp : UK Twitter staff being laid off seemingly don't need to wait for an email at 9am ET, they've already been disconnected from company email and Slack. I smell a lawsuit brewing. @elibelly : tweeps this week when people ask “how are you doing” https://twitter.com/... Scott Nover / @scottnover : Half of the company is being laid off tomorrow because Musk wanted to round up his offer to a weed joke number and then signed a binding contract with a specific performance clause like a clown and gave the board no choice but accept the deal and then sue to enforce. Max Kennerly / @maxkennerly : It appears Elon Musk has fired the director of software engineering at Twitter who, with a team of researchers, found “Tweets posted by accounts from the political right receive more algorithmic amplification than the political left.” 🤔 https://blog.twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Lisa Bloom / @lisabloom : Elon, I've read the emails sent to your laid off workers. Have you? I've also read your merger deal. Have you? More was required: bonuses, stock options, 60 days notice for starters. And the choice of laid off folks is disproportionately impacting POC. #TwitterLayoffs https://twitter.com/... Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : Gutting the ads & data center management teams is also an interesting choice when you need to both grow revenue and figure out how to cut data center costs. This is playing the corporate turnaround game on hard mode. https://www.theinformation.com/ ... Sarah Jeong / @sarahjeong : howling at this live-documentation of a future cda 230 lawsuit https://twitter.com/... Louis Gray / @louisgray : Some men will spend $44 billion and fire 3,500 people just to avoid going to therapy. @tech_actions : Last night, friends from the birdapp reached out to us, asking us to publish a layoff guide for their coworkers. It is written thoughtfully and with great care. If you work at the company, we encourage you to take a look. https://collectiveaction.tech/ ... Ben Collins / @oneunderscore__ : Talking to a couple of Twitter employees just now who learned they don't work there anymore when their email stopped working. I have never talked to people more excited to get laid off in my entire life. @joannag : What a wild ride. Thank you to tweeps past and present who made my time at Twitter so special. And the biggest thank you to Curation - it is a damn privilege to have led such an incredible team of rockstars. 🫡💙 https://twitter.com/... Linda / @thisisme0311 : @oneunderscore__ https://twitter.com/... Kate Starbird / @katestarbird : What a tragedy. This team was amazing... a brilliant team providing transparency and productive critique from inside Twitter. https://twitter.com/... Kevin Beaumont / @gossithedog : Sections of Twitter's cybersecurity team have been laid off, working to get numbers. Kushal Dave / @krave : Honestly happy to be laid off but the veil of @elonmusk is pierced. As messy as Twitter was pre-elon, it is a veritable clowntown of politics and toadyism and psychological abuse now. Afraid to get in my Tesla with what I learned this week. @pwnallthethings : Ultimately for Twitter to succeed or make money, the CEO needs to not be the news or constantly the main discussion on the platform. But also he is pathologically unable to stfu. So it'll continue to car crash for a while. Dan Primack / @danprimack : Three options, in ascending order of likelihood. 1/ Elon destroys Twitter. 2/ Elon makes Twitter much better and more successful. 3/ Elon basically treads water — albeit while kicking furiously — and sells Twitter to someone at a modest loss. @lu_shennan : My Twitter journey has come to an end, I got laid off while I'm 6-month pregnant. It has been a pleasure to work with all of you. I'm very thankful to lead such a n amazing DS team, it's been a fun ride. 🫡 #LoveWhereYouWorked Erika Hall / @mulegirl : Watching someone come in and destroy what so many people worked to build, for no apparent reason apart from pure ego, willing to incinerate their own fortune and reputation to do it, apparently. Just, wow. John Cusack / @johncusack : This is the plan chaos to serve gop - https://twitter.com/... Quentin Hardy / @qhardy : The American version of Squid Game lacks panache. https://twitter.com/... @rmac18 : Peter Thiel at the Stanford “Academic Freedom Conference” just now is cracking jokes about Twitter saying that even after Elon reduced the company's workforce in half it's still not going to advance human society. He then repeats some old line about Twitter employees smoking pot. Mark Milian / @markmilian : The emails started arriving in Twitter employees' inboxes in the early morning hours: “Today is your last working day at the company” https://www.bloomberg.com/... Rumman Chowdhury / @ruchowdh : Imagine feeling relief that you're the one on the receiving end of the thanos snap 🫰 Chad Loder / @chadloder : “A Twitter spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment; it is unclear whether Twitter continues to have a communications team.” 🫡 https://twitter.com/... Tom Simonite / @tsimonite : April: Elon Musk agrees to buy Twitter and says its algorithms will be open sourced Today: Elon Musk lays off Twitter's research team working on algorithmic transparency, which had found right-leaning accounts get an algorithmic boost https://www.wired.com/... via @willknight Kevin Bankston / @kevinbankston : Twitter just laid off its ML Ethics, Transparency, & Accountability team—a bunch of passionate, dedicated, and innovative expert advocates working to make tech better not just for Twitter's users but society at large. A real blow for the cause; they were doing trailblazing work. https://twitter.com/... Molly Ball / @mollyesque : I often think about what Elon Musk's brother told me about him, and I wonder if this quality is not ideal for a social-media CEO. https://time.com/... https://twitter.com/... Jesse Lehrich / @jesselehrich : as I told @nytimes, there's nothing visionary abt Elon summarily firing 3500 people w/expertise & institutional knowledge while he has no grasp of the biz. it's cruel & stupid, and will have stark consequences for the info ecosystem days before midterms. https://www.nytimes.com/... Adam Bain / @adambain : Great resource for Twitter Alumni to help on jobs and figure out what's next https://twitter.com/... Sar Haribhakti / @sarthakgh : Layoffs happen. CEOs hate doing them. It is often the only option to survive in the short term. Having your immediate boss look you in the eye and share the news in the last 1:1 and have the CEO address the org and sign off on the company wide email makes them easier to navigate. Sean Garrett / @sg : Companies will spend many millions on their “employer brand” and never come close to the culture that @biz, @ev, and @goldman helped create from day one by being good humans that sought out other good humans. https://twitter.com/... Steven Greenhouse / @greenhousenyt : Musk's layoffs might have violated advanced notification laws “While federal & Calif laws require companies to provide advance notice of mass layoffs, it was unclear if Musk had done so Calif officials said they had received no such notice from Twitter https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... Hayley Cuccinello / @hcuccinello : Elon Musk made a surprise appearance at NYC conference for rich investors during Twitter mass layoffs He joked he tried to get out of the deal: “it was like that scene from The Godfather.” More here: https://www.businessinsider.com/ ... Kayvon Beykpour / @kayvz : 💙 to all the tweeps impacted by the changes tomorrow. thank you for pouring your heart and soul into Twitter 🫡 Scott Nover / @scottnover : I did some back-of-the-napkin math and estimated how many Twitter employees' jobs could've been saved if Elon Musk didn't round up his buyout offer to $54.20 per share, a dumb weed joke price. What a depressing exercise. For @qz: https://qz.com/... Mike Masnick / @mmasnick : The new leadership is just so astoundingly, embarrassingly incompetent. I expected a mess, but this is way, way beyond what I expected. https://twitter.com/... @tron : One year ago, BetaKit profiled Twitter's Canadian office as a launch pad for new products & growing engineering hub. Today, the MD & director of public policy no longer work at @TwitterCanada. We're not sure yet how many others are gone. Tip @techmeme. https://betakit.com/... Kevin Roose / @kevinroose : This week on Hard Fork: Two Twitter employees speak about what it's like inside Elon's Twitter right now. https://www.nytimes.com/... Austin Kocher, PhD / @ackocher : Sounds like @twitter layoffs are rolling out already and anyone let go is having their access to everything pulled before they are personally informed. Might not be unusual (I don't know) but feels painful for people who invested their careers in the company. https://twitter.com/... Kurt Wagner / @kurtwagner8 : 👇🏼 Major layoffs right before a major election on a service that has tons of misinfo = not ideal https://twitter.com/... Brandy Zadrozny / @brandyzadrozny : Teams dedicated to making Twitter better for individual users and the world at large have been completely decimated. Some of these folks were doing such smart, creative work to better the experience, provide context, curation, transparency, safety, equality, etc. A bummer. https://twitter.com/... Peter Kafka / @pkafka : Twitter employee running Twitter Blue no longer at Twitter. Read on for his Liz Truss/Elon Musk analogy. https://twitter.com/... Sean Garrett / @sg : The lineage of remarkable @TwitterComms folks is strong. The folks who were working there yesterday would be first round draft picks at most any company. Happy to help @bborrman make connections and also connect the dots with fellow alums. (DMs open) https://twitter.com/... Ashley Mayer / @ashleymayer : The piece that will stay with me about the Twitter layoffs, beyond the overall chaos, is Elon not even putting his name on the company-wide communication. Dwight Silverman / @dsilverman : You know, if Twitter workers had unionized, this might be going very differently right now. Elon Musk begins mass layoffs at Twitter https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... James Ball / @jamesrbuk : Pretty sure a certain bird site owner kept talking about the need for algorithmic transparency but apparently: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://twitter.com/... Siva Vaidhyanathan / @sivavaid : I have criticized Twitter, especially @jack, for years. But the fact was that within the company dozens of employees worked tirelessly to make this experience better for all of us. They are all gone this morning. Twitter could have become much better. https://twitter.com/... @timnitgebru : When a billionaire's whim, just like that, erases what these women have worked on while fighting an uphill battle so that this platform is less of a dumpster fire. SMH. https://twitter.com/... Kevin Beaumont / @gossithedog : Keep seeing this - unfortunately I hear entire teams and functions have been ‘discontinued’ by Twitter. Sorry to Joan and everybody else caught up in this, it feels like dumbest timeline. https://twitter.com/... Erick Erickson / @ewerickson : Democrats prepare to claim voter suppression, etc. cost them the election. They'll blame Musk instead of Russia this time. https://twitter.com/... Ryan Ritter / @ndtex : You ever just sit back and laugh at this all starting because Elon's ex started fucking a trans woman and he was really mad he couldn't shitpost transphobic garbage? https://twitter.com/... @carnage4life : If the rumors are true that this will affect 50% of the company, I can't see how this isn't disruptive to the site since there's no way they could have figured out all the essential versus inessential people in a week. Kara Swisher / @karaswisher : Good thing by @dickc https://twitter.com/... Chris Bakke / @chrisjbakke : The layoff email from Twitter is the first email in history that should have been a meeting. Dan Primack / @danprimack : Former Twitter CEO ⬇️⬇️⬇️ (meanwhile, still not a public peep from @jack, who hired so many of the people now being fired... and who rolled over his shares into the new entity) https://twitter.com/... Damien Viel / @damienviel : 💙 all my thoughts, respect, energy and love to all tweeps around the world today. We have built together the most incredible app on the planet. Let's be proud of everything we have done and how have done it 🙏🏻 #lovewhereyouwork Anton Schulz / @antonschulz : I'm one of the thousands of amazingly talented and incredibly gifted Tweeps that were just laid off from @Twitter! More thoughts and feelings to follow once I've had a few drinks and a good night of sleep! (Also, we found out by getting locked our from our laptops.) https://twitter.com/... Nick Statt / @nickstatt : The former Twitter employee who filed the proposed class action lawsuit for violations of California's WARN Act personally delivered this incredible cartoon to Elon. https://twitter.com/... Paula Seligson / @pseligson : As Twitter layoffs hit, reminder that Musk ***essentially has to do deep cost cuts*** because he loaded up Twitter with debt to buy it. Annual interest increased to more than $1b, from less then $100m before. My May 17 story with details: https://www.bloomberg.com/... $twtr #elonmusk See also Mediagazer
Washington PostFaiz Siddiqui
Context & Ripple Effects
Twitter had previously made company-wide workforce reductions of roughly 8% in 2015 and 9% in 2016. The present cut is materially larger, following the prior-day rollout of account-based layoff notifications.
The related reporting describes key teams being gutted and employees assembling informal directories of remaining colleagues. That makes the reduction an operating-capacity change, not simply a headcount event.
First-order effects
Twitter employees lose roles or remain employed based on the email-routing process; Musk says those leaving were offered three months of severance.
Twitter disbands its Ethics, Transparency & Accountability team, while remaining employees must operate across teams whose staffing has been sharply reduced.
Second-order effects
Twitter's severance and WARN notice shift part of the immediate layoff burden into formal employment obligations rather than solely payroll savings.
Ad hoc directories of remaining workers indicate that internal coordination becomes a near-term constraint for the teams left to maintain Twitter's operations.
Third-order effects
Compared with Twitter's earlier 9% workforce cut, this reduction points to a more abrupt model of organizational restructuring, in which continuity depends on a much smaller internal operating base.
If repeated, the pattern would make workforce reductions a central lever of Twitter's ownership strategy, with governance and transparency functions among the areas most exposed to consolidation.
The trend: Twitter is moving from incremental, company-wide layoffs toward ownership-driven restructuring that cuts deeply across operating and governance teams.
Regarding Twitter's reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required.
Looks like I'm unemployed y'all. Just got remotely logged out of my work laptop and removed from Slack. #OneTeam forever. Loved you all so much. So sad it had to end this way 💔
Here's the first official communication from Twitter's new leadership to its staff, a week after Musk took over: a fun game where you get to find out if you're laid off or not based by 9am tomorrow, based on whether the email pops up in your Twitter account or personal account. h…
Last Thursday in the SF office, really the last day Twitter was Twitter. 8 months pregnant and have a 9 month old. Just got cut off from laptop access #LoveWhereYouWorked 💙 https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Hey Twitter employees getting laid off tomorrow! IMPORTANT INFO from a CA employment attorney (me): CA's “WARN” law requires Twitter to give you 60 days notice of a massive layoff. A layoff of 50+ employees within a 30 day period qualifies. I know you didn't get that notice.
Probably my last Twitter Slack message. The ML Ethics, Transparency, & Accountability team was one of a kind. Forever grateful that @ruchowdh took a chance on me and I got to be a small part of it. 🙏💙 #lovewhereyouworked https://twitter.com/...
Well this isn't looking promising. Can't log into emails. Mac wont turn on. But so grateful this is happening at 3am. Really appreciate the thoughtfulness on the timing front guys. Meanwhile to everyone else at Twitter, you're the best ❤️ #OneTeam https://twitter.com/...
Just got laid off. Bird App, it was an absolute honour, the greatest privilege ever to be a part of this team, this culture 🫡💙 #LoveWhereYouWorked #LoveTwitter https://twitter.com/...
Hearing that some of those who are being laid off from Twitter are pregnant. And they don't know what severance or insurance coverage they'll have moving forward. Just so much uncertainty right now on top of losing your job...
Employees in Twitter just got an email from their bosses saying layoffs are coming tomorrow. Those who are staying will get a note tomorrow in their work email. Those who are let go will get an email sent to their personal address. Slot machine-style layoffs.
Our team at 01 Advisors put together this community a couple weeks ago to help the Twitter Alumni Network stay connected as a large number of folks work to figure out what's next. It's active and productive and has already been a great resource for people https://md15q1upti9.type…
Looks like Elon Musk fired the entire curation team. These were the folks who tackled misinfo, contextualized conversations via the ‘Explore’ page, and helped make Twitter an unmatched source for breaking news. This will make Twitter noisier, more dangerous & less interesting
Elon Musk's offer to buy Twitter was so outlandishly high that a.) Twitter's old board couldn't say no, b.) Musk himself couldn't afford it, and c.) it damned the entire company to significant debt and massive layoffs. Every part of this deal has been and continues to be stupid.
Twitter is the ad-dependent print newspaper bought out by private equity that now needs to service its debt, and the first order of business is to sell off the real estate, lay off staff, hike subscription costs and hope the core customer base doesn't notice everything is worse.
it's like you programmed a “make money in media” bot and at startup it rapid cycles through every tried and failed idea of the past 30 years https://twitter.com/...
I am so fiercely proud of the privacy, security, and IT teams at Twitter. I've seen you do great work and get really good at getting that great work done in the face of enormous challenges. No matter what happens I've been so lucky. Thank you. Just like always, I'm here for you.
Any leadership team not owning this admittedly very difficult decision and avoiding to take decent communication actions is simply cowardice. No excuses. The buck stops with the leaders in both good and bad times. There's a reason they are the leaders!
just so were all clear, Musk is firing half of Twitter's staff, including huge swaths of their content moderation capability, four days before opening up identity-confirmation-free verification to the whole website which will happen...the day before a national election.
Woke up to no slack/gmail/office access and laptop remotely wiped out. Got fired without even a confirmation email while sleeping? There is always a new low. #twitter
After what we learned about the lack of basic security hygiene at Twitter and the telegraphing that today was coming, I'm genuinely curious how @elonmusk is balancing the risk that multiple reverse shells haven't been planted by 1 of the 1000s outgoing Engineering team members.
9 years and 1 week. It's been a ride. Forever grateful for the friendships and life lessons learned along the way. Once a Tweep, forever a Tweep. #lovewhereyouworked https://twitter.com/...
UK Twitter staff being laid off seemingly don't need to wait for an email at 9am ET, they've already been disconnected from company email and Slack. I smell a lawsuit brewing.
Half of the company is being laid off tomorrow because Musk wanted to round up his offer to a weed joke number and then signed a binding contract with a specific performance clause like a clown and gave the board no choice but accept the deal and then sue to enforce.
It appears Elon Musk has fired the director of software engineering at Twitter who, with a team of researchers, found “Tweets posted by accounts from the political right receive more algorithmic amplification than the political left.” 🤔 https://blog.twitter.com/... https://twitte…
Last night, friends from the birdapp reached out to us, asking us to publish a layoff guide for their coworkers. It is written thoughtfully and with great care. If you work at the company, we encourage you to take a look. https://collectiveaction.tech/ ...
Talking to a couple of Twitter employees just now who learned they don't work there anymore when their email stopped working. I have never talked to people more excited to get laid off in my entire life.
What a wild ride. Thank you to tweeps past and present who made my time at Twitter so special. And the biggest thank you to Curation - it is a damn privilege to have led such an incredible team of rockstars. 🫡💙 https://twitter.com/...
Elon, I've read the emails sent to your laid off workers. Have you? I've also read your merger deal. Have you? More was required: bonuses, stock options, 60 days notice for starters. And the choice of laid off folks is disproportionately impacting POC. #TwitterLayoffs https://twi…
Gutting the ads & data center management teams is also an interesting choice when you need to both grow revenue and figure out how to cut data center costs. This is playing the corporate turnaround game on hard mode. https://www.theinformation.com/ ...
Regarding Twitter's reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance.
Honestly happy to be laid off but the veil of @elonmusk is pierced. As messy as Twitter was pre-elon, it is a veritable clowntown of politics and toadyism and psychological abuse now. Afraid to get in my Tesla with what I learned this week.
Ultimately for Twitter to succeed or make money, the CEO needs to not be the news or constantly the main discussion on the platform. But also he is pathologically unable to stfu. So it'll continue to car crash for a while.
My Twitter journey has come to an end, I got laid off while I'm 6-month pregnant. It has been a pleasure to work with all of you. I'm very thankful to lead such a n amazing DS team, it's been a fun ride. 🫡 #LoveWhereYouWorked
Three options, in ascending order of likelihood. 1/ Elon destroys Twitter. 2/ Elon makes Twitter much better and more successful. 3/ Elon basically treads water — albeit while kicking furiously — and sells Twitter to someone at a modest loss.
Watching someone come in and destroy what so many people worked to build, for no apparent reason apart from pure ego, willing to incinerate their own fortune and reputation to do it, apparently. Just, wow.
Peter Thiel at the Stanford “Academic Freedom Conference” just now is cracking jokes about Twitter saying that even after Elon reduced the company's workforce in half it's still not going to advance human society. He then repeats some old line about Twitter employees smoking pot.
The emails started arriving in Twitter employees' inboxes in the early morning hours: “Today is your last working day at the company” https://www.bloomberg.com/...
“A Twitter spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment; it is unclear whether Twitter continues to have a communications team.” 🫡 https://twitter.com/...
April: Elon Musk agrees to buy Twitter and says its algorithms will be open sourced Today: Elon Musk lays off Twitter's research team working on algorithmic transparency, which had found right-leaning accounts get an algorithmic boost https://www.wired.com/... via @willknight
Twitter just laid off its ML Ethics, Transparency, & Accountability team—a bunch of passionate, dedicated, and innovative expert advocates working to make tech better not just for Twitter's users but society at large. A real blow for the cause; they were doing trailblazing work. …
I often think about what Elon Musk's brother told me about him, and I wonder if this quality is not ideal for a social-media CEO. https://time.com/... https://twitter.com/...
as I told @nytimes, there's nothing visionary abt Elon summarily firing 3500 people w/expertise & institutional knowledge while he has no grasp of the biz. it's cruel & stupid, and will have stark consequences for the info ecosystem days before midterms. https://www.nytimes.com/.…
Layoffs happen. CEOs hate doing them. It is often the only option to survive in the short term. Having your immediate boss look you in the eye and share the news in the last 1:1 and have the CEO address the org and sign off on the company wide email makes them easier to navigate.
Companies will spend many millions on their “employer brand” and never come close to the culture that @biz, @ev, and @goldman helped create from day one by being good humans that sought out other good humans. https://twitter.com/...
Musk's layoffs might have violated advanced notification laws “While federal & Calif laws require companies to provide advance notice of mass layoffs, it was unclear if Musk had done so Calif officials said they had received no such notice from Twitter https://www.nytimes.com/...…
Elon Musk made a surprise appearance at NYC conference for rich investors during Twitter mass layoffs He joked he tried to get out of the deal: “it was like that scene from The Godfather.” More here: https://www.businessinsider.com/ ...
I did some back-of-the-napkin math and estimated how many Twitter employees' jobs could've been saved if Elon Musk didn't round up his buyout offer to $54.20 per share, a dumb weed joke price. What a depressing exercise. For @qz: https://qz.com/...
The new leadership is just so astoundingly, embarrassingly incompetent. I expected a mess, but this is way, way beyond what I expected. https://twitter.com/...
One year ago, BetaKit profiled Twitter's Canadian office as a launch pad for new products & growing engineering hub. Today, the MD & director of public policy no longer work at @TwitterCanada. We're not sure yet how many others are gone. Tip @techmeme. https://betakit.com/...
Sounds like @twitter layoffs are rolling out already and anyone let go is having their access to everything pulled before they are personally informed. Might not be unusual (I don't know) but feels painful for people who invested their careers in the company. https://twitter.com/…
Teams dedicated to making Twitter better for individual users and the world at large have been completely decimated. Some of these folks were doing such smart, creative work to better the experience, provide context, curation, transparency, safety, equality, etc. A bummer. https:…
The lineage of remarkable @TwitterComms folks is strong. The folks who were working there yesterday would be first round draft picks at most any company. Happy to help @bborrman make connections and also connect the dots with fellow alums. (DMs open) https://twitter.com/...
The piece that will stay with me about the Twitter layoffs, beyond the overall chaos, is Elon not even putting his name on the company-wide communication.
You know, if Twitter workers had unionized, this might be going very differently right now. Elon Musk begins mass layoffs at Twitter https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
I have criticized Twitter, especially @jack, for years. But the fact was that within the company dozens of employees worked tirelessly to make this experience better for all of us. They are all gone this morning. Twitter could have become much better. https://twitter.com/...
When a billionaire's whim, just like that, erases what these women have worked on while fighting an uphill battle so that this platform is less of a dumpster fire. SMH. https://twitter.com/...
Keep seeing this - unfortunately I hear entire teams and functions have been ‘discontinued’ by Twitter. Sorry to Joan and everybody else caught up in this, it feels like dumbest timeline. https://twitter.com/...
If the rumors are true that this will affect 50% of the company, I can't see how this isn't disruptive to the site since there's no way they could have figured out all the essential versus inessential people in a week.
You ever just sit back and laugh at this all starting because Elon's ex started fucking a trans woman and he was really mad he couldn't shitpost transphobic garbage? https://twitter.com/...
Former Twitter CEO ⬇️⬇️⬇️ (meanwhile, still not a public peep from @jack, who hired so many of the people now being fired... and who rolled over his shares into the new entity) https://twitter.com/...
💙 all my thoughts, respect, energy and love to all tweeps around the world today. We have built together the most incredible app on the planet. Let's be proud of everything we have done and how have done it 🙏🏻 #lovewhereyouwork
I'm one of the thousands of amazingly talented and incredibly gifted Tweeps that were just laid off from @Twitter! More thoughts and feelings to follow once I've had a few drinks and a good night of sleep! (Also, we found out by getting locked our from our laptops.) https://twitt…
The former Twitter employee who filed the proposed class action lawsuit for violations of California's WARN Act personally delivered this incredible cartoon to Elon. https://twitter.com/...