Elon Musk set to fire roughly half of Twitter's workers
Elon Musk is set to cut about 3,700 jobs at Twitter, representing about half of the company's staff, according to Bloomberg News, Reuters and other media reports.
Employees started to receive notice Friday of whether they would lose their jobs, with some people tweeting about their status using the hashtag #OneTeam.
"Looks like I'm unemployed y'all. Just got remotely logged out of my work laptop and removed from Slack," Simon Balmain, a former community manager based in the U.K., tweeted. "So sad it had to end this way."
The push to slash costs comes about a week after the Tesla CEO took control of the social media company following completion of his $44 billion purchase of Twitter. Musk immediately fired Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, the company's chief financial officer and top lawyer, while other members of the company's leadership team have also left.
Twitter didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about the job cuts.
Musk overpaid for Twitter by about $20 billion, according to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, who told CBS MoneyWatch that he believed that would force the billionaire to cut between 30% to 50% of the company's employees. In its most recent quarter, Twitter lost $270 million and its revenue slipped as advertising growth slowed.
"By overpaying for Twitter by roughly $20 billion, there is a lot of wood to chop for Musk to try to make back his money for himself as well as his investors," Ives said.
Bloomberg also reported that Musk plans to reverse the company's current policy of allowing them to work from the location of their choice, noting that most employees will be asked to report to offices.