BENGALURU: Twitter Inc under its new owner Elon Musk has dismissed most of its 250-odd employees in India as part of mass layoffs across the globe. Sources said people across engineering, sales and marketing, and communications teams have been fired.
While there has been no official statement about the retrenchment, several employees took to the microblogging platform to confirm their layoffs. A former staffer, on condition of anonymity, told this newspaper that many of them are in a state of shock. According to reports, Twitter plans to cut its workforce by half, issuing pink slips to nearly 3,700 employees globally.
Aditi Shorewal, communication lead at Twitter, tweeted, “We knew this day would come, we prepared, but..it still hurts.”
Another former employee Yash Agarwal’s tweet has gone viral. “Just got laid off. Bird App, it was an absolute honour, the greatest privilege ever to be a part of this team, this culture.”
Agencies have reported that some former employees in the US have sued Twitter saying they were not given enough notice.
Meanwhile, in a memo, Twitter reminded employees about the need to “adhere to Twitter policies that prohibit you from discussing confidential company information on social media, with the press or elsewhere”.
Twitter also said it was temporarily closing all offices for the safety of employees as well as its systems. “If you are in an office or on your way to office, please return home,” it said in an email to employees.
When asked about the layoffs, former Twitter India head Manish Maheshwari said: “My heart goes out to them. They are topclass professionals, any company would be glad to have them.”
In another development, Musk blamed activists for the company’s financial distress. “Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists. Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America,” he said.