Twitter temporarily closes offices as layoffs begin

[groundloop]

Source: Reuters

Twitter Inc temporarily closed its offices and cut workers access to internal systems on Friday after telling employees they would be informed by email later in the day about whether they were being laid off.

[snip]

The social media company said in an email to staff it would tell them by 9 a.m. Pacific time on Friday (12 p.m. EDT/1600 GMT) about staff cuts.

"In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday," said the email sent on Thursday, seen by Reuters.

Musk, the world's richest person, is looking to cut around 3,700 Twitter staff, or about half the workforce, as he seeks to slash costs and impose a demanding new work ethic, according to internal plans reviewed by Reuters this week.



Read more: https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-start-layoffs-friday-morning-internal-email-2022-11-04/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=technology-roundup&utm_term=Technology%20Roundup%20-%202021%20-%20Master%20List

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The company's content moderation team is expected to be the most heavily affected. (i.e. Musk is totally fine with twitter once again spreading right wing lies).

Further down in the linked article it tells of employees finding out they've been axed by being logged out of their company accounts. It was bad enough that Musk was planning to have people informed of being cut by email instead of face to face meetings with their managers, but many didn't even get those emails, they just got disappeared. What a fucking narcissistic bastard.

[Walleye]

1. Sounds like Twitter might be in the golden toilet

[Wingus Dingus]

2. I wonder how many of these workers built a little sabotage

into the system before they got locked out? Hopefully a good number of them.

[getagrip_already]

3. It may not matter.....

These systems are complex, and there are entire critical segments that are maintained by a small number of people. Get rid of them, or the one person who knows how systems work together, and chaos ensues.

It's hard enough to keep these systems running with full staffing and a knowledge base to draw from. Security incidents, server failures, database corruption, upgrade snafu's - all cause temporary disruptions which could become extensive without the right people to fix them.

I don't know how many times I've heard an engineer say "I don't care how it is documented, that's not how this works".

[Phoenix61]

5. Documentation? What documentation? Otherwise known as job insurance. nt

[honest.abe]

11. Yep.. even losing just one critical person can cause a disaster.

"Documentation" LOL!

[SergeStorms]

14. Not to worry.

He's brought Tesla's engineers over to Twitter to handle all coding problems.

The two technologies are interchangeable, correct? 😳

[NullTuples]

22. Are those the ones that made the Autopilot code that keeps killing people? Just asking...

[SergeStorms]

27. Probably.

They'll make it so Twitter will kill you in your sleep. 😳

[iluvtennis]

4. So DISGUSTING to employees when you show up to work and can't get into the office.

[bullimiami]

6. how can someone pull such a dumb move? let your ego drive you into a 44B$ mistake.

and immediately go about destroying the worth of that mistake.

[Mr. Evil]

7. Just another self-absorbed spoiled brat.

Musk obviously has never the old saying, 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.' Not saying Twitter was an example of a sound business model but, it seemed to be doing well enough. Now, with his self-proclaimed brilliance he will single-handedly turn Twitter into Shitter in a matter of months if not weeks.

Just more proof that the world does not need billionaires.

[SergeStorms]

16. Twitter was doing well enough....

to squeeze $44 billion out of a narcissistic man-child in order to purchase it.

[Mr. Evil]

19. LMAO!

[CountAllVotes]

30. Soon he'll get bored w/Twitter

and he'll move on to something else no doubt.

What an idiot!

[Lonestarblue]

8. We really need some new labor laws.

No doubt Musk’s demanding new work ethic will require employees to work 70-80 hour weeks (or more) for their same or even reduced pay. Many companies have gotten away with firing employees to reduce operating costs—mostly to increase top management bonuses—by classifying employees as management when they actually are not and using independent contractors who get zero benefits. No wonder US workers are so dissatisfied!

[33taw]

9. I only had a twitter account for viewing. I disabled it today.

[cbabe]

10. Musk-Owned Twitter Sued for Violating CA and Federal Law With Mass Layoffs

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/11/04/musk-owned-twitter-sued-violating-ca-and-federal-law-mass-layoffs

Musk-Owned Twitter Sued for Violating CA and Federal Law With Mass Layoffs

"We will now see if he is going to continue to thumb his nose at the laws of this country that protect employees," said the attorney who filed the class-action suit.

JAKE JOHNSON
November 4, 2022

Just a week after completing his takeover of Twitter, billionaire Elon Musk was hit with a class-action lawsuit Thursday over his attempt to fire roughly half of the social media company's employees—a move that workers say violates California and federal laws requiring at least 60 days of notice for mass layoffs.

The lawsuit was filed in a federal court in San Francisco shortly after Twitter employees, who are not unionized, began receiving emails late Thursday notifying them of the sweeping job cuts. Some learned they were among those losing their jobs when they were unable to access the company's communication channels.

…more…

[NullTuples]

26. My cynical prediction: Like Trump, he'll drag it out for years & the company will fold

[Cha]

29. Excellent! TY! nt

[C Moon]

12. A company I worked for did this to us...

they sent us all home, and called us one by one if we were let go.
Email would come across every 15 minutes..."So long everyone..." "It's been real..." so on.
It was so creepy.

[tinrobot]

13. Notified by mail? Can you get any colder than that?

I think the ones getting laid off will actually be the lucky ones.

[Gore1FL]

24. At least they'll be the firsts ones

The rest will have to deal with the short-staff spiral before they quit, retire, die, or are fired themselves.

[bedazzled]

28. We got called into a non-air conditioned warehouse once

They announced the layoffs the loudspeaker. Pretty rough. "Goodwill!"

[Snackshack]

15. Done with it.

Twitter will end up as some version of Parlor.

DU should remove its Twitter links it puts at the bottom of the page anymore.

[SergeStorms]

18. + 44,000,000,000

[onlyadream]

20. I hate the twitter snapshots

If you use a phone you couldn't read them on DU without having to tip the phone to a landscape view (pain in the butt to read just a few sentences).

[yaesu]

17. Russia trolls are already swamping twitter with pro layoff posts defending their boy Musk. nt

[Shermann]

21. What exactly is a "pro-layoff post"?

[Gore1FL]

25. Cheering about Twitter employees losing their livelihoods. nt

[tonekat]

23. Lots of tweets on Twit about

How MAGA pigs have had their voices suppressed for so long, as if they were behind the Iron Curtain. Actually reveling in the firings.

You really have to be a sociopath to be a conservative.