The company is laying off “about 50%” of its employees worldwide

A week after being bought by Elon Musk, Twitter has undertaken to lay off half of its workforce, while launching major projects and battling against users, advertisers and associations worried about the transformation of the influential social network. “About 50% of the staff will be affected” by the current layoffs within Twitter, according to a document sent to employees of the social network who were thanked on Friday and consulted by AFP.

The Californian company, which had nearly 7,500 employees at the end of October, notified thousands of people by email and announced the temporary closure of its offices. “As announced earlier today, Twitter is reducing its workforce to help improve the health of the business. These decisions are never easy and it is with regret that we write to let you know that your Twitter post is affected. Today is your last day of work (…)”, indicates one of these emails, consulted by AFP.

Thursday evening, Twitter wrote to all its employees to warn them of the upcoming layoffs, telling them that the offices would be “temporarily closed” and badge access “suspended”, in order “to ensure the safety of each employee as well as that Twitter’s systems and data.

“Love to the tweeps”

As of last Thursday, when Elon Musk took control of the company, he had dissolved the board of directors, fired the executives, assumed the position of chief executive and took the company off the stock exchange. Shortly after the layoffs were announced, Twitter employees took to the social network to announce their job cuts, sometimes using the hashtags #LoveWhereYouWork and #OneTeam. ).

“All my thoughts, my respect, my energy and my love to the tweeps (nickname of Twitter employees, editor’s note) around the world today. We have built together the most incredible application on the planet, ”wrote for example Damien Viel, the general manager of Twitter France, on Friday. Overnight Thursday, five recently fired Twitter employees filed a class action lawsuit against the company for not receiving the 60-day notice period required by US law for layoffs. (Warn Act), according to the text of the complaint consulted by AFP.

Managers, and the marketing and design departments seem particularly affected, according to an employee who wished to remain anonymous. Elon Musk, who first renamed himself “Chief Twit” (“twit” meaning “idiot” in English), then “Twitter hotline operator”, brought in Tesla developers on Friday to go through reviews the work of Twitter employees.