Musk fires half of all Twitter employees – that could have an aftermath How Elon Musk is driving Twitter against a wall

The dry pre-announcement

The rumor mill about the expected layoffs has been simmering on Twitter for a long time. On October 20, The Washington Post reported that Tesla founder Elon Musk plans to lay off 75 percent of all Twitter employees. A week later, however, according to Bloomberg, the new Twitter owner told employees that was not the plan.

Despite Musk’s reassurances, the fact is that the layoffs have begun. Even if the exact number of those affected is still unknown.

On Thursday, all employees received the ominous message, which was simply addressed to “Team.”

It argues that getting Twitter on a healthy path requires reducing its global workforce, which is a difficult process. And further:

All employees would be notified of the decision by email. An impersonal gesture, which justifies Twitter with its geographically dispersed workforce and fast communication. All employees must receive an email by 9:00 AM PST (5:00 PM Swiss time).

Those who were allowed to stay received the message via their Twitter e-mail address, the rest via their personal e-mail address.

To protect the safety of employees, the Twitter system and user data, all offices would be temporarily closed. Hence the appeal to the staff:

The post briefly addresses the difficult challenge for all employees, before the next sentence reminds people not to share confidential company information — neither on social media nor with the press.

The message ends with the sentence:

In the end, the message ends as dryly as it began:

The early layoffs

There is great dissatisfaction among the employees. Shortly after the announcement on Thursday evening, there were the first signs of layoffs. This was before the employees had received their official cancellation by email.

Here’s how they suddenly couldn’t log in with their Twitter email and were banned from Slack (a business chat service):

This user also found out about his impending resignation in an ugly way. It doesn’t look promising, he tweeted at 3 a.m. He could no longer log in to his emails.

The layoffs would run east to west, a person on Twitter said, according to Business Insider. This means that Twitter workers in London were the first to hear about their fate. Then came New York, and finally Twitter’s biggest hub, California.

The legal aftermath

The takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk happened suddenly and unexpectedly last week. But for the affected workers, the layoffs are not only sudden and surprising, but also drastic. Even though layoffs had long been feared, those affected only heard the bad news at the last minute.

California labor law does not allow that. As employment lawyer Lisa Bloom writes on Twitter, Twitter should have notified its employees 60 days before the mass layoffs. This did not happen.

The purpose of the so-called WARN law is to give layoffs time to plan their next steps.

What is Elon Musk doing now with this law violation? Bloom sheds light on this:

In case of violation of the law, the dismissed employees received compensation in the form of back wages. Twitter should also be held liable for employees’ medical expenses that would be covered by a social plan.

Lisa Bloom’s tweet is a real test of Elon Musk’s heralded “Free Speech”. Bloom was upset after posting her tweets:

You can still see your messages. Just like those of hundreds of laid-off employees…

The emotional reactions

For example, an employee who was previously responsible for the tweets on the official Twitter account says goodbye. He says he can’t tweet that tweet anymore (at least not officially), but here’s his team’s latest tweet:

With the hashtag #OneTeam employees thank each other for the great time they had together on Twitter. This is what this user does:

He’s no longer a “Tweep,” writes another user, using a generic self-designation for Twitter employees. He loved every moment and worked with and learned from an excellent group of talented people.

The tweeps’ response was so overwhelming that Slack was taken out of action, writes this user:

Elon Musk’s response

Which reaction? The Twitter owner has not yet officially responded to the topic. He was still active on his platform, where he seems to have completely different problems:

An official statement is still pending.