Elon Musk set to fire 25% of Twitter staff as he takes over, claims report
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA: Twitter’s new boss and billionaire Elon Musk is all set to let go almost 25% of Twitter staff as he plans to shake things up after acquiring the popular social media platform at a whopping $44 million. As per a report, in the first round of layoffs, the new head issued an ultimatum to the platform’s engineers to restructure Twitter’s verification system. The team was given less than a fortnight to work on the system or else will be fired.
The Tesla and Space X founder has got celebrity lawyer Alex Spiro on board who spilled the beans on Musk’s plan for job cuts, a report by The Washington Post claims. The world’s richest man has already fired the social media company’s CEO, Chief Financial Officer, Head of Legal, and General Counsel on Thursday, October 27 as he took over. The statistics reveal as per regulatory filing that Twitter employed 7,000 employees at the end of 2021. It is feared that among these around 2,000 of the workforce will be sacked.
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This is fake – I did *not* tweet out a link to The New York Times! pic.twitter.com/d6V6m5ATW2
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2022
Recently, Musk called out a recent claim that the move may come before November 1, which would allow him to avoid stock grants to the employees as "false." It is also believed that engineers are the ones with the highest paycheck at Twitter, followed by sales personnel, with some digging more than $300,000.
The tech mogul wants to introduce a "pay-for-play" verification system, where a verified user will have to pay $20 per month for using Twitter services, claims The Verge. The sources claim that engineers’ were informed about the scheme on October 30, which means they now have November 7 as the deadline to get this running or face the heat. The outlet also adds that the charges of verification may change and are not fixed as of now. There would be other added benefits that will come within the ambit of this scheme, which is yet to be disclosed.
Just hours after The Verge report, Musk tweeted about the verification system, “The whole verification process is being revamped right now.” Platformer’s Casey Newton, a tech website, had also reported that Twitter will soon be launching for verified users to pay for the services. Earlier, The New York Times reported too that employees will be fired before November 1, in a cost-cutting measure where the social media giants will be saving on a "significant portion of employees’ pay," reports the Daily Mail.
Musk fired four top executives, who would have benefitted immensely from the merger deal. Former CEO Parag Agrawal alone was set to receive $60 million. However, it is said that the executives are weighing their next step.