Twitter Plans More Staff Layoffs – Report

More bad may be on the way for Twitter’s beleaguered workforce, after a news report suggested that a fresh round of job cuts are on the way.

According to Reuters, citing a Insider report quoting two people familiar with the company as its source, Twitter plans to lay off 50 workers in the platform’s product division in the coming weeks.

It comes weeks after CEO Elon Musk reportedly told staff at an all-hands meeting in December that there would not be any further retrenchments.

Staff layoffs

Musk already laid off 50 percent of the 7,500 workforce after he took control of the company.

Hundreds more staff quit after Musk demanded that the remaining staff commit to working “long hours at high intensity” or receive “three months of severance,” if they did not consent to these conditions.

Elon Musk also gutted Twitter’s external contractor teams, whose role was to ensure the platform was free of misinformation and hate – a move that has raised concern of a surge in hate speech on the platform.

But now the fresh round of job cuts could potentially reduce the company’s headcount to under 2,000, according to the Insider report.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment, but that is not surprising as there is no longer a communications department at the platform.

Revenue crisis?

In November Musk raised the possibility of the platform going bankrupt during his first mass email with the platform’s remaining staff.

Twitter is said to be confronting a revenue crisis, after advertisers including General Motors and Pfizer, paused spending amid fears of a rise in divisive content on the platform.

This week a senior manager told staff that daily revenue on 17 January was 40 percent lower than the same day a year ago.

Siddharth Rao, an engineering manager overseeing the engineers working on Twitter’s ad business, also reportedly told staff that more than 500 of Twitter’s top advertisers have paused spending on Twitter since Elon Musk took over.

Earlier this week it was reported that Twitter is offering free ad space to corporate brands that will commit to advertise on its platform.

And other signs of financial issues at Twitter are emerging, after Twitter began auctioning off its office furniture, as well as its fixtures and fittings from its San Francisco headquarters.

A landlord in San Francisco has also sued Twitter over failing to pay rent on its headquarters in the city.

Twitter has also been sued for failing to pay for two charter flights.

And now a recent report said that staff at its Singapore office (its Asia Pacific headquarters) were unceremoniously escorted out of the building by a landlord, after Twitter failed to pay the rent on time.