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Home/Tech/Elon Musk is said to have ordered job cuts across Twitter
Elon Musk is said to have ordered job cuts across Twitter
Elon Musk planned to begin laying off workers at Twitter as soon as Saturday, four people with knowledge of the matter said, with some managers being asked to draw up lists of employees to cut.
Musk, who completed a $44 billion deal to buy Twitter on Thursday, has ordered the cuts across the company, with some teams to be trimmed more than others, said three of the people, who declined to be identified for fear of retaliation. The scale of the layoffs could not be determined. Twitter has about 7,500 employees.
Reports of layoffs at Twitter have swirled since Musk agreed to buy the company in April. The billionaire, who also leads electric carmaker Tesla and rocket company SpaceX, has told investors that he would take Twitter private, reduce its workforce, roll back its content moderation rules and find new revenue streams.
The layoffs at Twitter would take place before Tuesday, when employees were scheduled to receive stock grants as part of their compensation. Such grants typically represent a significant portion of employees' pay. By laying off workers before that date, Nov. 1, Musk may avoid paying the grants, although he is supposed to pay the employees cash in place of their stock under the terms of the merger agreement.
Twitter and a representative of Musk's did not respond to requests for comment.
Ross Gerber, the CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management, said he was told by Jared Birchall, the head of Musk's family office, that layoffs were coming at Twitter. "I was told to expect somewhere around 50% of people will be laid off," he said.
Gerber said his firm had invested less than $1 million to help finance Musk's Twitter acquisition. Birchall did not respond to an email for comment.
Musk, 51, has moved swiftly since assuming ownership of Twitter on Thursday. He arrived at the company's San Francisco headquarters Wednesday and began meeting employees. Late Thursday, he fired Twitter's CEO, chief financial officer and other executives. He has also made an appeal to advertisers, who provide the bulk of Twitter's revenue, to tell them that the platform will be a respected advertising destination.
But Musk is taking time to evaluate other areas of Twitter, such as deciding what posts to keep up and take down on the site. Although he initially said he wanted Twitter to be a freewheeling place for all kinds of commentary and would bring back banned users, including former President Donald Trump, Musk on Friday made it clear that such changes would not happen immediately. Instead, he announced that he planned to form a council to handle content questions and would not immediately reinstate users who had been barred.
Musk also appears unlikely to pay the golden parachutes that the fired top executives of Twitter were set to receive. Under the merger agreement, those executives — including Parag Agrawal, the CEO — had been set to receive compensation of $20 million to $60 million if they were fired. But Musk terminated the executives "for cause," meaning he did it with justification, which may void that agreement, two people with knowledge of the matter said.
Those executives, who also include former chief financial officer Ned Segal, former general counsel Sean Edgett, and former top policy and legal executive Vijaya Gadde, are deliberating their next steps, one person said.
Musk may also be testing Twitter's engineers. He and his team have assigned some of them projects to complete, three people with knowledge of the matter said. One project involved changes to Twitter's login screen, they said. Some engineers worked late into the night Friday to complete the assignments, they said.
On Twitter, some users who accused the platform of muzzling them have been triumphant about the new ownership, while others have worried that the site will be overrun by hate speech and misinformation. Some users — such as star producer Shonda Rhimes, "This Is Us" executive producer Ken Olin and "Billions" showrunner Brian Koppelman — tweeted that they would leave the social media platform now that it was run by Musk.
Other Twitter users expressed concern over a surge of hate speech being reported on the platform since Musk took control. NBA star LeBron James pointed to a report by the Network Contagion Research Institute, a private group that studies the spread of ideological content online, which said the use of a racial slur on Twitter had increased by nearly 500% in the 12 hours after Musk's deal was finalized.
"I don't know Elon Musk and, tbh, I could care less who owns twitter," James tweeted. "But I will say that if this is true, I hope he and his people take this very seriously because this is scary."
On Saturday, Musk took to Twitter to discuss food. "Fresh baked bread & pastries are some of the great joys of life," he tweeted.
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Blackbeard and Mr. Kreegle chasing down the shark what stole Blackbeards hat.
Blackbeard (born Edward Teach c. 1680-1718) was an English pirate who sailed the West Indies and the eastern American coast in the early 1700's. Blackbeard used his fearsome image, rather than violence, to elicit the desired response from those he robbed. After his death, his legend became romanticised, with multiple books and movies based on his adventures.
In the Muppet Babies storybook Baby Gonzo's Treasure Hunt, Mr. Kreegle talks about his time working with Blackbeard on the Pacific Ocean, and specifically an adventure they had with a shark that stole Blackbeard's hat.
Fozzie Bear recites a joke at the beginning of the Muppet Treasure Island CD-ROM - "Did ya' hear the one about the pirate who kept falling down? They called him 'Black-and-Bluebeard!"
In his book Before You Leap, Kermit talks about his ancestors, including Greenbeard the Pirate, "who is still widely admired by many amphibians for his unique ability to grow a beard."


The 65-year-old son of Malaysia's second prime minister is also trying to build an image as a folksy voice of working people, especially members of the ethnic Malay majority. Najib, in a viral video last month, crooned a Malay-language version of the 1970s hit "Kiss and Say Goodbye," surrounded by a chorus of somber young singers, criticizing Mahathir's coalition for failing to live up to election promises.
Najib has also been hitting out online. His jibes against ruling party politicians on Facebook and Twitter have some social media users referring to him as "King of Trolls."
A relaxed, casually dressed Najib also paid a visit this month to Langkawi, Mahathir's island constituency, where he went around town, visiting markets, eating at hawker stalls and rubbing elbows and posing for selfies with passers-by.
Mahathir was not impressed. He told a news conference last week Najib seemed to be getting popular on social media because "he provides a lot of stories."
Harvinderjit Singh, one of Najib's lawyers, declined to comment on the former premier's public appearances but said the 1MDB trials were unlikely to be affected by the hoopla. "The case is going to be determined by what happens in court, not out of it," he said.
The prosecution has been recruiting top notch criminal attorneys including former federal court judge Gopal Sri Ram and Sulaiman Abdullah, a lawyer with a background in cases of white-collar crime. The AGC has also recalled several prosecutors from state offices to join the team, two lawyers with knowledge of the matter said.
Najib could face years in prison. He faces 39 criminal charges over losses at 1MDB and other state entities. Seven of those charges will be the subject of Tuesday's trial, relating to transfers totaling 42 million ringgit ($10.30 million) into Najib's personal bank account from SRC International, a former 1MDB unit.
Prosecutors have handed nearly 3,000 pages of documents to the defense ahead of the trial, said Najib's lawyer Singh. The documents include statements from 26 witnesses, some of whom were SRC officials, who will likely be called to testify.
Najib, who has not been asked to testify in his own defense, hopes only for a fair trial, Singh said. "Our client is of the view that if he gets a fair trial, then the truth will show itself to the public," he said.


Britain has accepted 50 Syrians under its scheme to provide a safe haven for the most vulnerable refugees from the war ravaged country.
Home Office Minister Karen Bradley said 50 Syrians had arrived on the vulnerable persons relocation scheme into the UK to date.
The figures were released in response to a written parliamentary question from Liberal Democrat Julian Huppert (Cambridge).
In her response, Ms Bradley said: "To date 50 Syrians have arrived in the UK under the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Relocation scheme.
"The scheme is based on need, rather than designed to meet set arrival projections. However, we will continue to bring groups here on a regular basis, and envisage that several hundred people will be helped over the next three years."
The scheme was announced in January after concerted political pressure from Labour and is designed to accept hundreds of the most vulnerable Syrian refugees.
It prioritises women and children who are at risk or in need of medical care, as well as survivors of torture and violence.
Labour had called on the Government to join the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) refugee quota scheme but ministers instead created a bespoke scheme and took advice from the UNHCR.