Elon Musk plans to lay off most of Twitter’s workforce if and when he becomes the owner of the social media company, according to a report Thursday by The Washington Post.
Musk has told prospective investors in his Twitter purchase that he plans to cut nearly seventy-five percent of Twitter’s employee base of 7,500 workers, leaving the company with a skeleton crew, according to the report. The newspaper cited documents and unnamed sources familiar with the deliberations.
However, Twitter has told its staff that there are no plans for company-wide layoffs since it signed a deal to be acquired by Musk, Reuters reported.
While job cuts have been expected regardless of the sale, the magnitude of Musk’s planned cuts are far more extreme than anything Twitter had planned, The Post reports.
Musk himself has alluded to the need to cull some of the company’s staff in the past, but he hadn’t given a specific number—at least not publicly.
Is Musk miscalculating or bluffing on job cuts on Twitter?
Techcrunch says that Musk may be miscalculating or bluffing. It is conceivable that Twitter wouldn’t even be able to operate if cut to the bone.
“Musk also barely has a grasp of the content moderation issues the company grapples with, another area that benefits from having more humans involved—not just a thrifty algorithm at the wheel,” the Techcrunch report says.
Techcrunch adds that “it’s also totally plausible that the 75 percent number is just another trick he pulled out of his hat to impress whoever he was talking to, maybe bankers he was courting for the acquisition or the various slavering rich men he texts with.”
Earlier in October, Elon Musk offered to complete his proposed $44 billion (£38bn) acquisition of Twitter in a U-turn on his decision to walk away from the deal.
Musk said buying Twitter Inc. would speed up the creation of something he called “X, the everything app,” suggesting he wants to add new services to the social media platform he is trying to take private.
Musk has mused aloud about making Twitter more useful, indicating he wants it to be more like WeChat, a messaging service that is hugely popular in China, and TikTok, the Chinese-owned video-sharing service that has taken off across the US.
A Delaware judge has given both sides until October 28th to work out details.
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