Elon Musk – live: Twitter’s new owner says ‘power to the people’ after firing 50% of staff citing ‘no choice’
Elon Musk laid off 50 per cent of Twitter employees yesterday and defended the decision by saying that the company was losing $4m per day.
He added that all those who lost their jobs were given three months of severance pay, which he claimed is “50 per cent more than legally required”.
The new owner of Twitter wrote on the social media platform that he purchased for $44bn: “Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required.”
Twitter alerted employees of their job status by email after barring their entrances to offices and cutting off their access to internal systems overnight.
“Team, In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” the internal memo to the employees noted.
