Elon Musk Reportedly Lays Off 200 Twitter Staffers After Saying He Wants To ‘Stabilize’ Company

Topline

Twitter has laid off more than 200 staffers, including some top executives who had risen up the ranks after Elon Musk’s takeover of the company, according to reports, weeks after the firm’s billionaire owner and CEO said he was working to “stabilize the organization.”

Key Facts

According to the New York Times, the layoffs have impacted 10% of Twitter’s remaining workforce of 2,000 people, with many learning that they had been laid off after losing access to their company email accounts and laptops.

The layoffs reportedly began on Saturday night and many learned their fate on Sunday.

Esther Crawford—the head of subscription service Twitter Blue who had previously defended the company’s new work culture under Musk and vowed to go “all-in”—was also let go, the Platformer’s Zoe Schiffer reported.

Crawford is the founder of the screen-sharing app Squad and joined Twitter after her company was acquired by the social media giant in late 2020.

Martin de Kujiper, who founded the newsletter platform Revue and Haraldur Thorleifsson, founder of design firm Ueno’s (both firms were acquired by Twitter in 2021) were also among those laid off on Sunday.

Crucial Quote

Crawford tweeted about her exit: “The worst take you could have from watching me go all-in on Twitter 2.0 is that my optimism or hard work was a mistake…I’m deeply proud of the team for building through so much noise & chaos.”

What To Watch For

The reason behind the most recent layoffs is unclear. After the last major purge, Musk had told employees there would be no more layoffs and the company was now looking to hire. Despite that promise, intermittent layoffs have continued at Twitter. The Verge’s Alex Heath, citing ex-Twitter employees, reported that Sunday’s cuts may be a prelude to Musk installing a “whole new regime” at Twitter. He added that Twitter has less than a dozen people “left working on the consumer product and design.”

Key Background

Since Musk’s takeover of the company in October, Twitter aggressively slashed its headcount from around 7,500 employees across the world to around 1,800. The layoffs began in November with the company cutting 3,700—or 50%—of its workforce, including most of its top executives. This was followed by another large-scale exit of workers after many of them refused to sign Musk’s ultimatum to sign on to a “hardcore” work culture. Earlier this month, Musk said he is working to “stabilize the organization” and ensure it is financially healthy and he plans to hand off CEO duties once this is achieved. The scale and rapid pace of Musk’s cuts appear to have had a major impact on Twitter’s product as users have complained about multiple glitches and and even a full scale outages.