Microblogging social media platform Twitter is undergoing many changes after being acquired by Elon Musk. In a recent development, Twitter laid off most of its employees in India on November 4, 2022. Though the company has laid off employees in its marketing, communication and engineering department in large numbers, other departments of the company are also undergoing significant shuffle and layoffs including the engineering department.
The CEO of Twitter, Parag Agrawal, as well as the CFO and a few other senior executives were fired last week by the world’s richest businessman, Elon Musk, who started his tenure there. Musk has now begun a significant effort to reduce the company’s overall staff. Layoffs in India are a component of the same exercise. The extent of this radical shift in the organizational structure can be gauged by the fact that Twitter has 300 employees in India and almost 250 employees across all the functions were fired by Elon Musk who was anyways not happy with the old management for their allegedly dishonest and untrue appearance during the acquisition deal.
Initially, it was speculated that only employees from certain departments are fired. It later became clear that the layoff covers almost all the departments. The major change that was seen in the process was the complete layoff of the communications team. Besides, employees from sales, marketing, and engineering teams in India are also fired. However, the severance packages of these employees are not disclosed yet.
In an email sent to its employees, Twitter said, “In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday. We will temporarily close all offices for the safety of employees as well as Twitter systems and customer data. If you are in an office or on your way to an office, please return home.”
However, most of the employees who have been fired have not received information about the same from the company. They learnt this when they reached their offices today morning and found that they are unable to log into their systems, email accounts and Slack. Instead, people who have been retained received ‘survivor’ emails, informing them that they have not been fired. The people who have been laid off will receive communication from the company on their personal email accounts, said a fired employee.
Economic Times quoted a Delhi-based employee who said that her entire team has been fired. “Many from content, partner, curation, communication, sales, and social marketing have been impacted,” she told ET. She complained that they should have been given notice before firing them, which was not done.
The report said that Twitter’s Bengaluru office Benniganahalli’s RMZ Tech Park seemed to be closed, and nobody was seen there except a security guard.
As of December 2021, Twitter employed about 7,500 workers, up from 5,500 the year before.
As the company is reducing the number after Elon Musk acquired it, the now ex-employees took to Twitter to inform that they were part of the lay off process. 26-year-old Yash Agarwal, who was in Public Policy in Delhi, tweeted earlier today that he has been just laid off. He tweeted, “Just got laid off. Bird App, it was an absolute honor, the greatest privilege ever to be a part of this team, this culture.”
The tweet of Yash Agarwal went viral for showing a positive attitude even after losing his job.
Another ex-employee Shifalika Yogi wrote, “It’s been an honor to be a part of this team and this organization. It gives me immense gratitude to be able to call you folks my colleagues and my friends. It’s been an amazing ride.” She held the post of Senior Client Account Manager at Twitter India.
According to a report by Moneycontrol, Musk has a tough hurdle in his attempt to transform the business by boosting sales while navigating the perilous terrain of content moderation and hateful speech. Additionally, the worldwide financial slump has caused a major slowing in the digital advertising business, which has adversely affected the business expansion of internet companies that depend on advertisements, including Twitter, Meta, Alphabet, and Snap.
Elon Musk tweeted, “Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists. Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.”
In an attempt to broaden Twitter’s revenue sources, Musk has recently discussed updating the company’s membership program Twitter Blue with a new $8 monthly cost and charging for verification.