It’s going to be a rough day at Twitter. The company has started laying off employees as Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, tries to cut costs at the social media platform.
Starting Thursday night, numerous Twitter staffers began bidding farewell to the company through tweets posted online.
“Looks like I’m unemployed y’all. Just got remotely logged out of my work laptop and removed from Slack,” wrote Simon Balmain, a former senior community manager at the company.
So far, Twitter hasn’t publicly commented on the layoffs. But in an internal email, the company notified employees about the mass job cuts, which are slated to begin today, Friday, Nov. 4.
“We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward,” the email reportedly says. The company is notifying which employees will be losing their jobs via email.
Twitter could end up laying off half of its staff, which currently sits at around 7,500 employees, according to The New York Times, citing internal messages and unnamed investor.
Musk took on $13 billion in debt to buy Twitter, a company that’s historically struggled to post a profit. For example, last year the company reported a $493 million operating loss. Now Musk has to scramble to stop the bleeding and find ways to bring in new revenue or else he risks losing more on his acquisition.
However, the layoffs are sparking concern Twitter is losing staff responsible for important projects. One employee, Joan Deitchman, expects Twitter to dissolve the company’s ML Ethics, Transparency, and Accountability team.
“Yep, the team is gone,” she tweeted. “The team that was researching and pushing for algorithmic transparency and algorithmic choice. The team that was studying algorithmic amplification. The team that was inventing and building ethical AI tooling and methodologies. All that is gone.”
Meanwhile, one group of ex-Twitter employees has filed a class-action lawsuit against the company for the layoffs. According to the lawsuit, the ex-employees claim Twitter is violating federal and state WARN acts, which require employers to give a 60-day notice to affected employees when a mass layoff begins.