Elon Musk has ruthlessly fired nearly half of Twitter’s 7,600-strong workforce, leaving several departments completely shut across the globe, including in India, in one of the most brutal sackings the tech world has ever seen.
Teams tasked with defending against election misinformation ahead of the US midterm elections on November 8 were hit the hardest, according to The Verge.
Product trust and safety, policy, communications, tweet curation, ethical AI, data science, research, machine learning, social good, accessibility, and certain core engineering teams were among the worst-affected Twitter verticals.
Arnaud Weber, VP of consumer product engineering, and Tony Haile, a senior product director, were also let go.
“I’m also consciously uncoupled from Twitter. It’s a weird day, people on either side of the 50 per cent aren’t sure whether to be grateful or gutted,” tweeted Haile, a former Twitter Frontiers Lead.
Those who are left at the company are uncertain about their future.
“Woke up to the news that my time working at Twitter has come to an end. I am heartbroken. I am in denial. It’s been the best, craziest, most rewarding ride of my career. I have loved every single minute of it,” posted Michele Austin, a former Twitter employee.
Musk fired the majority of its over 200-person team in India.
According to sources, the departments of marketing, engineering, and communications were the hardest hit.
Those whose jobs were saved are constantly afraid of losing them in the next round, which they believe will happen soon.
Employees in other countries were notified that their positions were “potentially impacted or at risk of redundancy.”
According to the employee FAQ, the layoffs will affect “roughly 50% of the workforce.”
Musk expressed his desire to “communicate with everyone about his vision for the company soon.”
Twitter has been sued in the United States for mass layoffs that occurred without prior written notice to employees.
The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging violations of worker protection laws such as the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act and the California WARN Act, both of which require 60 days’ advance notice.
Source:OCN