Just when the remaining Twitter employees thought the worse was over, Chief Twit has let more employees go. This past Friday (December 16th) evening an unknown number (since Twitter doesn’t have a communications department anymore) of employees in the infrastructure division were laid off via email. The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Musk had laid off Nelson Abramson, Twitter’s head of infrastructure.
And that was my last day at Twitter. Laid off by email. The experience has been indescribable from chaos to hilarious.
— Dave Beckett (@dajobe) December 17, 2022
Twitter did not immediately respond to Engadget’s comment request. The company has not had a communications team since it began reducing its workforce. By The Information’s estimate, Twitter’s headcount has shrunk by about 75 percent since Musk’s takeover of the company in late October. The social media website employed approximately 7,500 under former CEO Parag Agrawal. As of a week ago, Twitter’s internal Slack listed around 2,000 employees, according to the outlet. In November, Musk reportedly told what was left of the company’s workforce Twitter would not lay off any more workers. The pledge came after the billionaire’s “extremely hardcore” ultimatum led to at least 1,200 resignations.
Additional casualties among the team responsible for keeping Twitter up and running are likely to add to fears about how unreliable the site may become in the near future. At the same time, the move may further alienate Tesla investors who were already concerned about how much time Musk was spending on Twitter. According to The Information, Musk tapped Tesla engineer Sheen Austin to run the social media website’s infrastructure team following Abramson’s departure.
There are still 12-days left of this year….will Twitter last that long? At this point I have no clue. Nearly three-quarters of the work force is gone since Musk bought Twitter, Musk is facing many legal issues as a result of the lay-offs and trying to withhold severance pay. Then there the issues with Twitter refusing to honor an existing vendor contract and withholding quarterly contractual payments. Musk has banned/suspended several journalists Twitter accounts on the basis they were supposedly doxing him. Stay tuned!
via Engadget
