Layoffs: Twitter cutting 8 percent of workforce
SAN FRANCISCO - Twitter (TWTR) is laying off 336 employees, signaling CEO Jack Dorsey's resolve to slash costs while the company struggles to make money.
The cutbacks announced Tuesday translate into about 8 percent of Twitter's workforce of 4,100 people.
In an SEC filing, the company said the restructuring, which was approved by its board a day earlier, "is part of an overall plan to organize around the Company's top product priorities and drive efficiencies throughout the Company. The Company intends to reinvest savings in its most important priorities to drive growth."
The company said the restructuring will cost up to $20 million in severance.
The purge comes two weeks after Twitter brought back one of its co-founders as permanent CEO in hopes that Dorsey would be able to resolve problems that have slowed the messaging service's user growth and compounded an uninterrupted cycle of financial losses.
Cutting costs can boost profits, but at Twitter, it has also raised uncertainty about the future and the company's desire for aggressive growth and the larger audience it has sought for so long.
In a letter to the company's employees, Dorsey wrote, "The team has been working around the clock to produce streamlined roadmap for Twitter, Vine, and Periscope and they are shaping up to be strong. The roadmap is focused on the experiences which will have the greatest impact."
"The roadmap is also a plan to change how we work, and what we need to do that work. Product and Engineering are going to make the most significant structural changes to reflect our plan ahead. We feel strongly that Engineering will move much faster with a smaller and nimbler team, while remaining the biggest percentage of our workforce. And the rest of the organization will be streamlined in parallel."