Elon Musk begins mass layoffs at Twitter

WASHINGTON: Elon Musk will start laying off Twitter employees on Friday.

As per an unsigned internal memo seen by The Verge, Twitter employees were notified in the email that the layoffs were set to begin.

Employees will receive an email by 9 AM PST on November 4th confirming whether they have been laid off or not, according to the internal memo, which also states that employee badge access to Twitter's offices will be shut off "temporarily."

"We acknowledge this is an incredibly challenging experience to go through, whether or not you are impacted," the memo read.

"Thank you for continuing to adhere to Twitter policies that prohibit you from discussing confidential company information on social media, with the press or elsewhere," the memo added.

Musk is expected to cut roughly half of Twitter's roughly 7,500-person workforce. The layoff comes a week after Musk became Twitter owner.

Musk has already indicated that he would make job cuts at Twitter, telling employees at a town-hall meeting this summer that there needs to be "a rationalization of headcount" at the social network.

On October 30, asked by someone on Twitter to identify "the one thing that's most messed-up at Twitter right now,"

Musk replied, "There seem to be 10 people 'managing' for every one person coding" at Twitter. In April, Twitter accepted Musk's proposal to buy and make the social media service private.

However, Musk soon began sowing doubt about his intentions to follow through with the agreement, alleging that the company failed to adequately disclose the number of spam and fake accounts on the service.

In July, in a surprising turn of events, Musk who had long been showing his interest to buy Twitter terminated the deal. The Tesla CEO did so by alleging that Twitter violated their mutual purchase agreement by misrepresenting the number of spam and fake bot accounts on its platform.

After Musk put out the deal termination announcement, the market saw a sharp decline.

Later, Twitter sued Musk accusing him of using bots as a pretext to exit a deal. Again, last week, Musk confirmed that he would move forward with the Twitter buyout at the originally agreed price of USD 54.20 per share.