Sources: Twitter stopped paying rent on offices and is considering not paying severance packages to cut costs, as its top lawyer Alex Spiro leaves the company
Twitter has stopped paying rent on offices and is considering not paying severance packages to former employees, among other measures.
New York Times
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the next step in a collapse that began with November's mass layoffs, when key teams were gutted and severance was structured around the WARN Act. Since then, some US ex-employees have only just received agreements offering one month of base pay with no prorated bonuses — and now even that level of payment is reportedly on the table for reconsideration.
Former employees awaiting severance now face the possibility of receiving nothing beyond what was already paid, after months of delay had already cut offers to one month's base pay.
Landlords on Twitter's offices — including the international sites already being abandoned — go from delayed-payment risk to outright nonpayment, and the company loses its lead counsel just as those disputes would land in court.
Second-order effects
Creditors and landlords are pushed toward collection action or lease termination, converting Twitter's office footprint from an operating cost into a liability it sheds by default.
Remaining staff see that even contractual compensation is discretionary, which compounds the attrition pressure already created by ad hoc management via Google Docs directories after the layoffs.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, Twitter operates as a residual company — revenue-generating core intact, fixed obligations treated as negotiable — a structure where employment law and lease enforcement, not product strategy, set the boundaries.
How courts and regulators treat the withheld severance becomes a test case for whether WARN Act-adjacent obligations can be deferred indefinitely by a distressed private owner.
The trend: Twitter is transitioning from an operating company into a cash-managed residual asset, testing how far contractual obligations like rent and severance can be stretched before enforcement forces the issue.
Alex Spiro, Musk's top personal lawyer who initially took over Vijaya Gadde's job, is out at Twitter. story on the legal travails over there lately https://www.nytimes.com/...
Elon is merely a more successful slightly more intelligent Donald Trump. Leveraging his personality and image to grow his companies while refusing to pay his bills. Neither of them can control their impulsive reactions. https://www.nytimes.com/...
Twitter has stopped paying rent on offices and is considering not paying severance packages to former employees, among other measures aimed at cutting costs. Also refused to pay $197,725 bill for private charter flights made the week of Musk's takeover https://www.nytimes.com/...
One of the strange truths that Donald Trump's business career highlighted for me is that one of the great privileges of being rich and powerful is that it makes it quite easy to effectively steal from people. https://www.nytimes.com/...
He fired his lawyer for not firing the lawyer who was looking out for the company's liabilities. Liabilities such as the ceo tweeting “it's a crime scene.” https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
CHAOS AGENT This dudes “professional ethics” are nonexistent and it's so unfortunate how much harm is being inflicted...just because https://twitter.com/...
Twitter is a show about a trail of utter destruction which feels like it's on the verge of running out of content any moment but inexplicably manages a new episode. Every. Single. Day. https://twitter.com/...
Oddly, I happened to notice Spiro's name in another news story today - he is acting as Megan Thee Stallion's personal lawyer as she deals with the trial of Tory Lanez, who is accused of shooting her in the feet. https://www.latimes.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Wow. Elon is now considering not paying the one month of severance he promised IN WRITING, last month. On behalf of the many Twitter workers I represent: we'll file new claims for this breach, if it happens, and add it to all the others. #TwitterLayoffs https://www.nytimes.com/..…