Twitter is embroiled in a controversial takeover by Elon Musk, but no matter who ends up owning the company, it could see massive employee cuts in the coming months, according to a report by The Washington Post. based on interviews and internal documents.
For one thing, Elon Musk told potential investors in his deal to buy the company that he planned to ditch nearly 75% of Twitter’s 7,500 employees, with the goal of reducing the workforce to just over 2,000 workers.
While the takeover deal seems more possible than ever, the social network’s current management also has plans to cut payroll by about $800 million by the end of next year, which would mean the departure of nearly a quarter of the company. .
Internal documents and interviews to which the newspaper had access also indicate that the cuts would affect Twitter’s infrastructure, specifically those in charge of the data centers that keep the platform running, which currently has more than 200 million users daily. .
Firing so many people would not only impact staff morale, but also affect the company’s efforts to combat disinformation content, fake accounts, spam, and hate speech.
Even the data scientist who worked at Twitter measuring spam metrics, Edwin Chen, told the outlet that this could put users at risk of consuming piracy within the platform or being exposed to offensive material, such as child pornography, without their consent. .
“It would be a cascading effect where services would go down and people would remain without the institutional knowledge to get them back, and would be completely demoralized and wanting to leave,” Chen said.
The deal between Musk and Twitter is expected to close on Friday of next week, and while the move to lay off so many people may be attractive to investors, since they must pay less salaries, analysts have criticized how he will manage to maintain the operation of such a large social network with so few employees.
“You have to be able to show that if you make those cuts, what happens next?” said ValueEdge Advisors vice president Nell Minow, who is also a corporate governance expert. “What are you going to replace those people with, with Artificial Intelligence?”
It should be remembered that a few months ago, Musk had a meeting with several Twitter employees, where they questioned the businessman about possible layoffs after his purchase and he mentioned that he saw no reason for low-performing employees to continue in the company.
However, Musk himself told investors that his plan is to double Twitter’s revenue in three years, as well as triple the number of monetizable daily users in the same period, something he did not detail how he would achieve.
However, the newspaper cited sources close to the billionaire, who has told his associates that his plan to reduce the number of employees at Twitter is a first step in his strategy, which would involve hiring more “more effective and profitable innovations” workers. , as a subscription service to exclusive content from influential figures.
