Musk Plans to Cut 75% Off Entire Twitter Workforce

Twitter may be forced to operate with a fraction of its workforce as Elon Musk moves ahead in his plan for a leaner platform. Previously, there were rumors that Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has made an offer to buy Twitter, would lay off some of the social media company’s workers. The billionaire hinted at the possibility if he finally succeeds with the takeover.

Elon Musk to Cut Workforce at Twitter after Takeover

According to The Washington Post, Elon Musk wants to cut off 75% of the entire workforce of about 7,500 people on Twitter. He revealed his intention to prospective investors in this Twitter deal, meaning that Twitter would be left with about 2,000. As it is, the workforce layoff is bound to happen whether Musk eventually becomes the owner of Twitter or not. Amid the ongoing economic meltdown and wider staff reduction among top companies, Twitter also had the plan to trim its workers. However, no one thought the cut could be as significant as 75%. The company’s management was ready to reduce its payroll by about $800 million by the end of the coming year. Also, the social network wants to reduce its infrastructure, including data centers.

With laid-down plans to reconstruct and make several cuts, many believe that Musk’s $44 billion bid to buy Twitter is way out of the company’s struggles. According to data scientist Edwin Chen, who used to be in charge of spam and health metrics at Twitter, millions of users will feel the impact of the coming layoff. Chen, who is currently the CEO of content-moderation startup Surge AI, is of the opinion that Twitter has too many staff. He added that Musk’s proposed cut is “unimaginable” and could lead to users experiencing hacks. The former Twitter employee mentioned that users may be exposed to child pornography and other offensive material.

“It would be a cascading effect where you’d have services going down and the people remaining not having the institutional knowledge to get them back up, and being completely demoralized and waiting to leave themselves.”

Employee’s Reaction to Possible Layoff

Amid rumors of the cut, Twitter lawyer Sean Edgett sent a note to employees that there is no confirmation that Musk wants to lay off a large part of the entire workforce. The top lawyer added that Twitter’s “cost savings discussions” are already on hold. Anonymous sources confirmed that the workers are reacting to the layoff news in their internal Slack groups.

Musk taking over Twitter is known news that has made several headlines since the billionaire’s initial offer. After many back and forth and threatened court cases, both parties are expected to close the deal by the 28th of October.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives also had something to say about the ongoing matter.

“The easy part for Musk was buying Twitter and the hard part is fixing it. It will be a herculean challenge to turn this around,” added he.