Musk fires half of Twitter staff for “improving company health”

It is said that the richest man in the world doesn’t like wasting time. Just a week after buying Twitter, Elon Musk pledged to lay off half of his workforce, launching big projects and battling users, advertisers and associations concerned about the transformation of the influential social network. “About 50% of the staff will be affected” from the ongoing layoffs within Twitter, indicates a document sent to employees of the social network who on Friday were thanked and consulted by AFP.

The Californian company, which had nearly 7,500 employees at the end of October, temporarily closed its offices and emailed thousands of people, explaining that the purpose is “to improve the health of the company”. “I learned when I woke up that I will no longer work on Twitter. My heart is broken. I can not believe “tweeted Michele Austin, director of regulations for the United States and Canada.

“Unfortunately, there is no other choice when the company is losing more than $ 4 million a day”, Elon Musk said in his first post on the subject, 24 hours after the company’s first email. “All those who lost their jobs were offered three months of compensation”he precised.

Last Thursday, when the billionaire took control of the company, he dissolved the board of directors, fired the executives, assumed the position of general manager and took the company off the stock exchange. Marketing and design executives and departments seem particularly impressed, according to a recently fired employee who wished to remain anonymous.

Find ways not to pay compensation

He fears that the new management will try to find ways to withhold severance pay from former employees, finding excuses to accuse them of professional misconduct. “They look like mercenary tactics, they try to economize at all costs, to the point of treating people in an inhumane way”regrets this same employee.

On Thursday night, five recently fired Twitter employees filed a class action lawsuit against the company for failing to receive the 60-day notice period required by US law for massive layoffs (Warn Act), according to the text of the complaint. consulted by the AFP. One of them, Frenchman Emmanuel Cornet, was fired for professional misconduct without explanation, despite being in the top 5-10% of the company’s engineers, according to lists compiled this week.

Elon Musk engaged Tesla developers to evaluate the work of Twitter employees. He also quickly rolled out the review of several products, including the paid subscription and account authenticity verification system, and imposed a fast pace. The change in corporate culture is therefore confirmed: several executives have stepped down on their own this week and more than 700 people have already left this summer, of their own free will, according to an employee.

“We are witnessing the real-time destruction of one of the most powerful communication systems in the world. Elon Musk is an unpredictable and inconsistent billionaire, he poses a danger to this platform that he is not qualified to lead. “responded Nicole Gill, co-founder of Accountable Tech, one of the NGOs who called on advertisers to put pressure on the new boss.

Because the libertarian entrepreneur supports an absolutist vision of freedom of expression which, according to his critics, risks opening the door to a resurgence of abuse (harassment, incitement to hatred, disinformation …). Several groups have already decided to suspend advertising spending on Twitter, including American agribusiness giant General Mills, American carmaker General Motors and its German competitor Volkswagen. And more than a million users seem to have left the platform since last Thursday, according to estimates by Bot Sentinel, a specialist in the analysis of social network accounts.

The company is heavily indebted

However, to finance his $ 44 billion acquisition, Elon Musk heavily borrowed the company whose financial health was already fragile. It recorded a significant deficit in the first two quarters of the year.

On Friday, the stormy 50-year-old blamed the drop in revenue “a group of activists who pressured advertisers even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we have done everything to placate activists. It’s complete trash! They are trying to destroy free speech in America, “he accused. Yoel Roth, the site’s security officer, reassured himself by tweeting that the content moderation department had only 15% departures and that staff first line was the least affected.