The firings came after Twitter cut the hours of some of its contract workers over the weekend. Five people who know about the situation said that many of the contractors work on content moderation and data science and were fired without warning.
Mr. Musk has moved quickly to change Twitter while painting a bleak picture of how it makes money. He fired half of the company’s 7,500 workers this month and told those who stayed to build and launch new products quickly. Last week, he said that Twitter could go bankrupt and that to stay alive, it needed to become more “hardcore.” Six people who know about the matter said that Mr. Musk plans to reorganize the company to get rid of middle managers.
Musk has also tried to keep Twitter’s employees motivated. The New York Times saw a short message he sent to employees on Monday. In it, he said that “extraordinary amounts of stock would be given for extraordinary performance.” Mr. Musk said that the structure was similar to how things worked at SpaceX, his private rocket company, but he didn’t say more.
Changes At Elon Musk’s Twitter
A swift overhaul. Elon Musk has moved quickly to change Twitter since he bought it for $44 billion in October. He warned that the company’s finances were bad and that it needed new products. Here are some of the changes that have happened so far:
Then, Mr. Musk tweeted on Monday that Mr. Frohnhoefer had been “fired.” He later took the tweet down.
When Mr. Frohnhoefer was asked for his opinion, he didn’t give one.
People who knew about the plan said that Mr. Musk’s team was asked to go through Twitter’s internal chat platform and make a list of disobedient employees. They also looked through the tweets of employees to find criticism. Emails seen by The Times showed that those who had been found to have broken the rules were fired around 1:30 a.m. Pacific time on Tuesday.
Six people who know what happened said that a few Twitter employees who talked about Mr. Frohnhoefer’s firing in internal chats were fired. Emails seen by The Times say that they were told they had been fired for “violating company policy.”
More on Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover
- Tweeting Through the Criticism: Elon Musk has been under a lot of scrutinies since he bought Twitter, so he has gone on a tweeting spree to fight back, argues and explain his actions.
- A Familiar Playbook: In his first few days on Twitter, Mr. Musk has been copying some of what Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp CEO Mark Zuckerberg does.
- A Different Kind of Deal: The rich people in Silicon Valley used to buy yachts and islands. Now that they have enough money, they can buy any company they want.
- ‘Hard Fork’:In an episode of The Times’ tech podcast, two Twitter employees talked about how the company felt after it was bought.
Mr. Musk tweeted sarcastically on Tuesday, “I would like to apologize for firing these geniuses.” “Their huge amount of talent will no doubt help them in other ways.” In another tweet, he made fun of a former employee by saying that the person’s tweets about him were caused by “a tragic case of adult-onset Tourette’s.”
“.. Mr. Musk’s team .. also sorted through employees’ tweets, looking for criticism.”@MikeIsaac @kateconger #Twitterhttps://t.co/TnvMWoHifR
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) November 16, 2022
Melissa Ingle, a data science contractor who worked to track down false political information, said she hadn’t been told about layoffs, but on Saturday afternoon she couldn’t get to her Twitter email or internal systems. In an email seen by The Times, her contracting management company, Magnit, told her that Twitter was doing “a reprioritization and savings exercise” and that Monday would be her last day.
“I don’t get severance pay because I’m a contractor,” Ms. Ingle said. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to pay the rent or feed my children.”
Magnit didn’t answer right away when asked for a comment.
Two people who know about the situation said that some employees are worried that they won’t get paid for work-related expense reports they turned in before the mass layoffs. Some have accumulated thousands of dollars in expenses that have not been paid out, and others have been told that expenses that were not approved by human resources managers before the mass layoffs will not be paid back.
Six people said that the remaining Twitter employees are getting ready for a company-wide reorganization, which could happen before the end of the week. During the layoffs, Mr. Musk got rid of a lot of managers, which made the company’s structure flatter. The Times heard on a recording that Mr. Musk said that design, program management, and engineering would report directly to him at his first meeting with employees on Thursday.
Tiffany Hsu helped with the news story.
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