Twitter Employees Apprehensive Over Looming Layoffs

The purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk has continued to generate ripples, especially with the administrative actions taken by the Tesla’s CEO.

He had dramatically laid off four of the company’s top executives while trying to stamp his control on the social media site.

But there is expected to be more  reshuffling of the staff apparatus of Twitter with employees of the Incorporated company eagerly awaiting a message by the new leader to chart a new course.

Twitter’s over 7,500 employees are waiting with bated breath over the next line of action from the new hierarchy and Musk as he was reported to be intending to prune the staff strength of the company immediately some of the employees receive new stock grants.

Though no official confirmation has been made concerning staff cuts, workers have been looking for clues in Slacks, even as they gather in private Discords to share the latest rumours.

According to the Washington Post, the  layoffs is expected to hit roughly a quarter of the staff, and would cover departments like sales, product, engineering, legal, trust and safety.

The workers are not exactly sure who will be fired and this is increasing their nervousity especially with the Friday afternoon instruction that mandates all engineers to print out the last 30 to 60 days of code they had written, as per Platformer. It is believed this would be part of measures Twitter’s new hierarchy to lay off some staff as the move would identify the highest and lowest performing employees.

CNBC had reported that Elon Musk had infused more than 50 employees from his EV company, Tesla into Twitter to help with the transition.

Some employees who spoke to The Verge said they received a call from a Tesla engineer inquiring about their team, asking them the highly regarded engineers at the company.

The employees are getting more frustrated over the lack of information on their status, with the uncertainty spilling into Twitter’s slack channels.

An employee wrote:

“Since no leadership type appears willing or interested in filling the void: if you’re feeling bleak and dismayed right now, just want you to know you’re not alone. this sucks.

“Want to particularly acknowledge our colleagues on visas and others with precarious employment needs and relationships.

“Wishing everyone a smooth and quick journey to job stability and security, wherever we all land.”

Twitter employees are already anticipating their fate as they are sharing contact information in Slack Channels to allow them reach out in the eventuality that they lose access to their communications.

Elon Musk had charged engineers to work on at least two major projects, pressing them to complete them within days or weeks.

One of them is the reinvention of Twitter Blue that will require users to pay $20 a month to retain their verification badge.

The second one is the revival of Vine, a short-form video app to become either a standalone product or get infused into the core Twitter app.

After Musk gave the Vine project which had generated buzz a go-ahead, more than 12 engineers have volunteered to be part of the project.

“You are all software engineers. You know what needs to be written and improved. Do it. You are in charge”, he said.