Tech layoffs: Twitter reportedly fires more engineers, month after Elon Musk announced end of job cuts

Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover tale has been riddled with twists and his u-turns, as he started off trying to buy it for the sake of absolute free speech, backtracked over bots and then finally bought it. Since then Musk has laid off more than half of the workforce, including engineers who disagreed with him publicly, and hasn’t commented on his own poll that concluded that he should step down. Almost a month after saying that layoffs at Twitter have stopped, Musk is reportedly taking another u-turn to fire engineers from the infrastructure division.

Numbers not revealed as entire department faces risk

According to reports by media organisation The Information, employees of the vertical have received mails saying that their services aren’t required anymore. But the exact number of people who have lost their jobs is till not known. In the name of cutting costs and ensuring profitability for Twitter, Musk has also fired the head of the infrastructure department, alongside his senior team members.

Twitter losing talent and confidence

Many including Twitter’s ad boss and diversity head were among the first senior members to leave on their own after Musk took over. It has been reported that Musk is working 18 hours a day and has a room to sleep in the Twitter headquarters, while many employees have also been working late. In little more than a month since he took over, Musk has also triggered uncertainty by dropping hints of Twitter’s bankruptcy, conducting polls on key decisions, and causing concerns about the site facing an outage.

Tech layoffs getting worse

Among other big tech firms, Amazon has also warned of further job cuts after firing 10,000 employees, and about 20,000 are expected to lose employment at the firm. This week Cisco also started slashing 5 per cent of its workforce, which represents a number as high as 4,100. As recession looms, the tech sector layoffs are getting worse, and have spilled over into media with Disney and CNN, as well as fashion brands such as H&M.

Published on: Tuesday, December 20, 2022, 06:28 PM IST