Barely a week after Elon Musk took over ownership of Twitter, nearly half of the company’s workforce, 3,700, have been asked to take their matching orders in a message sent to them via their official email on Friday. The massive layoff has engendered a tough snarl among affected workers, many of whom have threatened with a lawsuit and deactivated their Twitter accounts.
Despite the recent developments, the new Twitter boss appeared to be unruffled. In a tweet Mr Musk was reported to have made on Friday morning, it was made known that the decision of the company to lay off its workers is due to the company’s excessive weight which has been taking a toll on its capacity to stay afloat. According to Musk, Twitter has been losing $4 million per day because of its large workforce…. “This has left the company with no choice but to let some people go” he said.
However, Mr Musk noted that everyone affected by the layoffs has been given three months of severance packages, which is 50% higher than legally required. According to him:
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“Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately, there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required.”
Musk had earlier announced that users would be made to pay $8 a month to get/retain their blue thick verification badges, an incremental innovation by Musk. Even though this had initially generated negative reactions from some users, the blue bird owner insisted there is no going back on the plan. He tweeted: “Trash me all day, but it’ll cost $8.”
Tech leaders have voiced their concerns about the new development on Twitter. A Linkden post by Olu Akanmu, president and co-CEO of Opay, African based fintech company draws to mind why Musk’s sudden pruning and aggressive posture may be much more than meets the eye. The post went thus:
”Twitter will ultimately be a test of whether the long term performance of an organization is correlated to the moral/employee engagement of its people; whether an organization whose success has been historically driven by some significant moral purpose could remain enduringly successful with inflexion of its purpose into sheer, crude and cold blooded mercantilism; whether it is not true definition of genius that geniuses do not know it all; whether in a complex knowledge world of overlapping games and players, whether an emperor I know it all leadership style can create a sustainable long term value and at what point does genius overconfidenly stretch itself into hubris”
Responding to the post, Eyitayo Ogunmola, founder and CEO of Utiva, a Nigerian based international Edutecth company, said the following:
“The Unseen reality is that there is a cohort of folks (tech and non-tech )that align with the vision and direction of the new leadership.
“I would say this will be about 3 things:
“Are the leaders able to attract the talents that align with the new direction?
“Are they able to push innovations that users desperately want? I think there are million of folks that want the blue thick subscription.
“Are the leaders able to leverage the media controversy to build hype for the brand now?”