Elon Musk has told prospective investors that he is planning to implement massive layoffs once he acquired Twitter, according to Engadget.
The billionaire said that he plans to cut 75 percent of the platform's workforce upon completion of the deal. Currently, the company has 7,500 employees, which means around 5,600 employees will be laid off.
Twitter is Gearing for Massive Job Cuts
According to The Verge, Musk will be implementing massive layoffs to bring down the cost of the company's operation.
However, no matter who owns Twitter, the company is likely to be hit with massive job cuts in the coming months.
According to The Washington Post, the current management of the social media platform is also planning to reduce the company's workforce by around 25 percent. The plan is to reduce the company's payroll by $800 million.
If this were the case, 1,900 employees would be left unemployed. The company is also planning to have major infrastructure cuts and data center closures to further cut costs.
However, Tesla CEO's decision to lay off 75 percent of the employees is unimaginable, according to Edwin Chen, a data scientist formerly in charge of Twitter's spam and health metrics. He said that the billionaire's plan would be "a cascading effect."
"You'd have services going down and the people remaining not having the institutional knowledge to get them back up, and being completely demoralized and wanting to leave themselves," Chen further added.
The multi-company CEO has always expressed that he is in favor of cutting the number of employees. This was evident during the Twitter Town Hall meeting in June when he said that "he didn't see why low-performing workers should remain employed."
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Deal Between Elon Musk and Twitter is Moving Forward
According to Chen, if Musk proceeds with the massive layoffs, the impact would likely be immediately felt by millions of users.
He added that the massive job cuts would put Twitter's users at risk of hacks and exposure to offensive material.
According to TechCrunch, it seems that Tesla's CEO does not have a fundamental understanding of some serious issues the company faces. Some of the dire security and safety needs of the company will not be resolved by massive layoffs.
The billionaire also plans to loosen the content moderation restrictions of the platform. Once the deal is completed, he plans to allow formerly banned accounts to be reactivated.
Given this, it appears that the billionaire also has a very limited understanding of the content moderation issues the company deals with.
The deadline for Tesla's CEO to close the purchase of Twitter is approaching. He should be able to complete the deal by October 28th. It seems that the deal is moving forward, according The Washington Post.
The Elon Musk-Twitter deal has been a complicated issue. Back in April, the multi-company CEO proposed to buy the social media platform for $44 billion.
Later on, Musk announced that he was putting the deal on hold because of the spam accounts. Eventually, the billionaire decided to abandon the deal because his condition was not satisfied.
But in a sudden turn of events, Tesla's decided to proceed with the deal. A sign that the deal is proceeding is the social media platform froze its employees' equity awards until the merger agreement was signed.
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