As Twitter employees prepare for significant layoffs as part of a new restructuring that may affect up to a quarter of staff, Elon Musk has designated himself CEO of the firm and disbanded its board of directors, according to information released in a company filing on Monday.
In a first round of layoffs, 25% of the company’s employees may be let go, according to a story in the Washington Post on Monday.
The software billionaire is reportedly cutting jobs as he revamps the business after last week’s $44 billion acquisition. The negotiations concerning the upcoming employee losses were reportedly overseen by celebrity attorney Alex Spiro, a longstanding Musk legal counsel.
After purchasing Twitter last week, Musk acted swiftly to assume control, dismissing key employees like Vijaya Gadde, Ned Segal, and Parag Agrawal, the company’s CEO, as well as the head of finance and legal affairs.
Additionally, Musk has resigned from Twitter’s board of directors and replaced them with himself, according to a business filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. Later, Musk claimed in a tweet that the board’s dissolution was “only temporary.”
Musk previously changed his Twitter bio to “Chief Twit”, alluding to his new role.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company had more than 7,000 employees at the end of 2021, according to a regulatory filing, and a quarter of the headcount amounts to nearly 2,000 employees.
For weeks, rumors have been circulating that Musk intended to reduce the social media company’s employment significantly. According to a previous story by The Washington Post, Musk reportedly informed potential investors he intended to fire over 75% of Twitter’s employees in an effort to pay off the company’s mounting debt, which has increased significantly since the beginning of his acquisition.
Musk then refuted those allegations, telling workers he would not fire such a sizable chunk of the workforce.
The layoffs would occur before 1 November, when workers were expected to receive stock grants as part of their compensation, according to a report published on Saturday by The New York Times. Musk is said to have ordered job cuts across the company, with some teams to be cut more severely than others. Musk tweeted in response to the report, “This is incorrect.”
The company had financial issues even before Musk started his quest to acquire it in April of this year, and by July it had “seriously halted hiring” amid a broader economic slowdown in the tech sector. No matter what happened, the corporation was expected to fire about 25% of its employees.
Since Musk started his war with Twitter earlier this year, offering to acquire the firm before trying to back out over claims Twitter misrepresented the number of bot and spam accounts on its network, there has been a sense of unease among the company’s employees. Musk ultimately made the decision to move forward with the acquisition, making it public last week and commencing his reorganization of the company right once.
The controversy surrounding Musk’s purchase of Twitter has lowered workplace morale and resulted in a wave of recent staff departures. The speculations have raised concerns about how large layoffs could affect Twitter’s daily operations, especially security and safe
