Apparently, Twitter is not done with laying off its employees. According to The Verge, the company parted ways with around 4,400 of its 5,500 contract workers on Saturday. There were no notices provided for the employees, before Twitter cut their access to the company email and internal communication systems.
Twitter Continues to Grow Smaller
Among the estimated 4,400 of 5,500 were employees that worked in content moderation, real estate, marketing, engineering, and other departments. Managers were not informed of the layoffs, and only noticed the job cuts as they saw the employee accounts deactivated in Twitter's system. One employee even found out that he was out of a job through a tweet by Casey Newton, founder, and editor of Platform.
You don’t have to treat people this way pic.twitter.com/YLBJdJqvkH
— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) November 13, 2022
The workers that were laid off were not only US-based. Some of the contract workers were based in India, as well as in other locations. Reports also say that Twitter terminated all of its communications team, according to full-time employees. They also made jokes about how the role was now filled by media outlets that are covering the company.
There's speculation that the workforce reduction does not end with the contract workers, since Musk expressed that if workers can show up in the office but don't do so, then "resignation accepted." According to an update from Newton, the cuts are expected to have a huge impact on content moderation and core infrastructure. These factors are what keep the social media platform running, as mentioned in the tweet.
Before the termination of the contract workers, around half of Twitter's 7,500 employees were laid off, as well as 15% of its trust and safety team. Some of the Twitter executives even resigned or were fired, as Elon Musk took the helm. This could be due to the company losing $4 million a day, which Musk revealed when he addressed the layoffs on November 4th, as mentioned by CNBC.
The Letter Received by the Contractors
The email that notified the workers that they were terminated, came after they already realized that they were laid off. Their last day off work would be today, and they were not expected to do anything. A worker expressed their disappointment, pointing out that Twitter did not learn from the debacle that it caused before, pertaining to termination without notice.
In the email, they justified the job cuts by saying that the company conducted a "reprioritization and saving exercise," followed by stating that it was to better focus considering the resource constraints. There was also a reminder about the Non-Disclosure Agreement that employees signed, which is why certain workers chose to speak about the termination anonymously.
Included in the email was that former employees should submit outstanding time cards and expenses, should be submitted to Magnit VMS immediately. If they had questions, they can reach out to Surya Systems, Inc., which employed the contract workers.
