For Twitter employees an email notification would be the only way to know if they would have a job to return to on Monday. An email notification on one's work email would mean you still had the job, while an email on your personal email would mean that you had been laid off.
Workers would receive an email with the subject line: "Your Role at Twitter."
On Friday NDTV reported, citing sources, that the entire marketing and communications department of Twitter in India had been sacked. While Twitter India has not made an official statement, the media outlet reported that the sources revealed job cuts have affected all verticals including engineers.
If you are in an office or on your way to an office, please return home.
Many Twitter employees have started posting on the platform and other social media channels about the sackings but one particular tweet by a Twitter India employee went viral on Friday. 25-year-old Yash Agarwal posted a positive note after he was laid off, and as of Friday evening the tweet had over 13,500 likes and nearly 1,000 retweets.
Agarwal wrote, "Just got laid off. Bird App, it was an absolute honour, the greatest privilege ever to be a part of this team, this culture...#LoveWhereYouWorked #LoveTwitter". Agarwal's Twitter bio said he worked in the public policy department for the social media platform.
3,700 jobs cut, Twitter sued
Elon Musk, following his $44 billion takever of the micro-blogging platform, reportedly planned to cut 3,700 jobs. On Friday, Twitter told employees in a memo that cuts would be finalised on Friday. "In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday," Twitter management said in an email reviewed by Bloomberg.
"We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company's success going forward."
The company would inform affected staffers Friday by 9am San Francisco time, according to the memo. Amid the layoffs, Twitter plans to temporarily close offices and suspend badge access "to help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data," the memo said.
Twitter was sued over Musk's plan to eliminate jobs at the social-media platform, which workers say the company is doing without enough notice in violation of federal and California law. A class-action lawsuit was filed Thursday in San Francisco federal court.
#OneTeam, #LoveWhereYouWorked
Based on the tweets online, quite a few staffers have already received their email notifications and many of them posted updates using the #OneTeam and #LoveWhereYouWorked hashtags.
User Rachel Bonn tweeted: "Last Thursday in the SF (San Francisco) office, really the last day Twitter was Twitter. 8 months pregnant and have a 9 month old. Just got cut off from laptop access." She worked in the product marketing department, according to her Twitter bio.
Responding to the #OneTeam thread, Twitter's Head of Safety & Integrity Yoel Roth, said: "Tweeps: My DMs (direct message routes) are always open to you. Tell me how I can help." Roth was the most senior executive to message publicly with a tweet of support for staff who are losing their jobs. He also appeared to still have his job.
Looking for jobs
Security staff at Twitter's San Francisco headquarters carried out preparations for layoffs, while an internal directory used to look up colleagues was taken off line Thursday afternoon, people with knowledge of the matter said. Employees have been girding for firings for weeks.
In recent days, they raced to connect via LinkedIn and other non-Twitter avenues, offering each other advice on how to weather losing one's job, the people said. Ex-Twitter engineers are also using social media to respond to former "Tweeps" looking to land jobs elsewhere.
The company started cutting employee access to email and Slack on Thursday night. Some employees who were shut out of their work tools suspected their jobs were already cut, though they had received no official confirmation yet.
Going in blind
Employees who spoke with Reuters said they are learning about changes at their company by observing their work calendars and screenshots of discussion from managers, not from official communication from Musk or other leaders.
One employee confirmed that "days of rest," which are highly popular company-wide days off, have been removed from calendars for the rest of the year.
- Inputs from Bloomberg, Reuters
