Twitter may be forced to operate with a fraction of its workforce as Elon Musk continues his plan for a lean platform. Previously, rumors suggested that the Tesla CEO would lay off some of the company’s employees. The billionaire has alluded to this possibility if he finally succeeds in buying the company.
Elon Musk will reduce Twitter’s workforce after its takeover
According to the Washington Post, Elon Musk wants to cut 75 percent of Twitter’s entire workforce, or about 7,500 people. He revealed his intention to potential investors in the deal, which means Twitter would be left with about 2,000 people. As it stands, employee layoffs are inevitable whether or not Musk becomes the owner of Twitter. In the context of the current economic meltdown and widespread downsizing at large companies, Twitter had also planned to reduce its workforce. However, no one thought the reduction could be as large as 75%. The company’s management was prepared to reduce its payroll by about $800 million by the end of the year. The social network also wants to reduce its infrastructure, including its data centers.
With plans to restructure and downsize, many believe Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase offer for Twitter is a solution to the company’s woes. According to data scientist Edwin Chen, who was previously in charge of spam and health metrics at Twitter, millions of users will feel the impact of the upcoming layoffs. Edwin Chen, who is currently the CEO of content moderation startup Surge AI, believes that Twitter has too many people. He added that Musk’s proposed reduction is “unimaginable” and could lead users to suffer hacking. The former Twitter employee mentioned that users could be exposed to child pornography and other offensive content.
“It would be a cascading effect where you have services that go down and the people who stay don’t have the institutional knowledge to get them back up and running, and are completely demoralized and waiting to leave themselves.”
Employee reaction to a potential layoff
Amid the rumors of a cut, Twitter’s lawyer Sean Edgett sent a note to employees stating that there is no confirmation that Musk wants to lay off much of the entire staff. He added that the “cost-cutting discussions” at Twitter are already on hold. Anonymous sources confirmed that employees are reacting to the news of the layoffs in their internal Slack groups.
Musk’s takeover of Twitter is a familiar story that has made headlines several times since the billionaire’s initial offer. After much back and forth and threats of litigation, the two sides are expected to close the deal by October 28.
Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush, also had something to say about the pending deal.
“The easy part for Musk was buying Twitter and the hard part is fixing it. It will be a Herculean challenge to turn it around“, he added.