“Your Role at Twitter”: Elon Musk employees await email saying if they are among 3,700 workers to be laid off

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Many Twitter employees are keeping their eyes on their inboxes today as Elon Musk is set to lay off 3,700 workers by email.

Thousands of Twitter workers will be nervously looking at their inboxes today, as Elon Musk plans to make mass redundancies, cutting costs as the platform’s new owner. It continues a beleaguered week for the SpaceX founder, who has found his acquisition of Twitter not the smooth ride he was anticipating.

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In an especially cruel fashion, Musk has informed employees that they will receive an email at 9am US (around 4pm GMT) to let them know if they have a job or not. Some Twitter employees have already been informed not to turn up to work, as an estimated 3,700 roles are set tobe axed.

The series of lay-offs also include Twitter workers outside of its head offices in San Francisco, with a number of remote employees in the United Kingdom and Europe also expected to receive an email with the subject line “Your Role at Twitter” this afternoon. Some employees at the company have, ironically, taken to Twitter itself to let followers know the situation in real time.

One Twitter employee, Chris Younie, wrote “Well this isn’t looking promising. Can’t log into emails. Mac won’t turn on. But so grateful this is happening at 3am. Really appreciate the thoughtfulness on the timing front guys…” while another, Simon Balmain, told the BBC “everyone got an email saying that there was going to be a large reduction in headcount, and then around an hour later, folks started getting their laptops remotely wiped and access to Slack and Gmail revoked.”

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It’s the latest in a litany of faux pas’ Musk has made since taking over Twitter in a £38.1billion deal last week. There has been numerous outrage over the possibility of Twitter users that had faced lifetime bans being reinstated on the platform, including former President of the United States Donald Trump.

That incident was compounded after news that those looking to keep their verified status on Twitter, the all important blue tick, could do so with a potential $8USD subscription service. That idea was criticised by many users and industry experts as a means of more fake news from “experts” appearing online.

Twitter was founded in 2006 by Jack Dorsey as a micro-social networking platform to compete against the multi-faceted Facebook and came under intense scrutiny recently due to the number of false reports regarding both the last US election and the coronavirus pandemic.

Musk believes that there is untapped potential in the product and after numerous negotiations, including the threat of legal action should Musk have pulled out of the deal, sealed the deal last week.

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