The layoffs at social media company Twitter has clearly not ended, as the company’s CEO Elon Musk on Thursday laid off a few more members of its workforce from its remaining public policy team.
A Twitter user Theodora Skeadas, who was a member of the company’s public policy team disclosed that she has been laid off while noting that team members who were not sacked during Musk’s takeover of the company have had their employment terminated.
She wrote,
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“Yesterday was my last day at Twitter, as half of the remaining Public Policy team was cut from the company. It’s hard to convey how fortunate I feel to have had this exceptional opportunity.
And now it is my turn to say goodbye.
Yesterday was my last day at Twitter, as half of the remaining Public Policy team was cut from the company.
It's hard to convey how fortunate I feel to have had this exceptional opportunity. pic.twitter.com/98vt7Zy7dw
— Theodora (Theo) Skeadas (@theodoraskeadas) December 22, 2022
“I am unbelievably proud of the work we did to protect people in global conflicts including Iran, Ukraine, and Libya. I am especially proud of my work in. Managing our Trust and Safety Council, until it was dissolved last week”.
The recent layoff by Musk has seen him terminate the employment of the remaining members of the public policy team.
The team was responsible for interacting with lawmakers and civil society on issues including free speech, privacy, and online safety.
Meanwhile, reports disclose that Twitter’s public policy chief, Sinead McSweeney, had left the company before the recent layoff.
With a fresh round of layoffs, Twitter now reportedly has roughly 2,000 employees, down from 7,500 as of late September.
Recall that during Musk’s takeover of the company in October, he laid off thousands of employees in departments across the company, in a severe round of cost-cutting.
He later pushed out additional employees, including through an ultimatum requiring them to work hardcore or voluntarily exit the company.
Musk however disclosed that the mass layoffs were necessitated to cut costs at the struggling company.
Meanwhile, sacked Twitter employees were not cool with the way he went about it as more than 100 former Twitter employees have filed demands for arbitration and are participating in proposed class action lawsuits related to the layoffs.
They are alleging that they were unfairly laid off, noting that Musk also terminated employees who were actively on medical or parental leave and reneged on promises related to severance pay. Some also claim that Musk placed “unreasonable demands” on Twitter’s workforce to shrink its staff.
The former employees suing Twitter scored an early win last week when a judge ruled in favor of their motion ordering the company to alert all laid-off employees of the pending lawsuits before requiring them to sign severance agreements waiving their litigation rights.
The conduct of Musk since he took over Twitter, has been described as incredibly egregious.
In the meantime, Musk may be considering finding someone else to head the social platform, after Twitter users voted over the weekend for him to step down as CEO. Musk tweeted this week that he would leave the top role “as soon as he finds someone foolish enough to take the job!”
I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 21, 2022