New Delhi: Twitter announced mass layoffs in India, in job cuts that have affected all verticals including engineers and the entire marketing and communications department.
While the number of people laid off was not immediately available, sources said employees in the sales, engineering and partnerships divisions were “affected”, apart from the two departments that were disbanded. In all, more than 50 per cent of Twitter’s India workforce of about 200 has been sacked, sources said.
“Some people in the sales and engineering department have been retained,” a source said. Reports said some employees would be getting severance pay for two months following a lawsuit in California.
“It looks like employees are getting their notices and at least some will be paid until January 4,” said Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney who filed a class-action lawsuit in California. “I am pleased that Elon Musk learned something from the lawsuit we brought against him at Tesla and is making an effort to comply with the WARN Act. We filed this case preemptively to make sure a repeat of that violation did not happen.”
The move follows a week of uncertainty about the company’s future under Elon Musk, who began his innings at Twitter last week by firing the CEO Parag Agrawal among other top executives and announcing plans to charge $8 a month for a verified account.
Twitter India is yet to issue a statement or respond to a request for comment.
The company temporarily closed its offices worldwide on Friday after telling employees they would be informed by email later in the day about whether they are being laid off.
“In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” said the email sent on Thursday, according to news agency Reuters.
Mr Musk, the world’s richest person, is looking to cut around 3,700 Twitter staff, or about half the workforce, as he seeks to slash costs and impose a demanding new work ethic, according to internal plans reviewed by Reuters this week.
The company’s content moderation team is expected to be a target of the cuts, tweets from Twitter employees suggested on Friday. Mr Musk has promised to restore free speech while preventing it from descending into a “hellscape”. Web Desk
Please visit our website London Institute of Peace Research for latest peace news
