‘Avian flew’ as ax hits ‘half’ the staff
Elon Musk-led Twitter began a longdreaded and drastic round of layoffs on Friday — and numerous workers took to the social media site to confirm they were caught in the bloodbath.
Company officials began informing laid-off employees about their fate via email messages Friday morning as Musk scrambles to cut costs at the struggling firm.
Roughly half of Twitter’s 7,500 employees were expected to lose their jobs during the culling — with some workers claiming they had lost access to systems overnight.
“Looks like I’m unemployed y’all. Just got remotely logged out of my work laptop and removed from Slack,” tweeted Simon Balmain, a former senior community manager at Twitter. “#OneTeam forever. Loved you all so much. So sad it had to end this way.”
“Everyone got an email saying that there was going to be a large reduction in headcount, and then around an hour later, folks started getting their laptops remotely wiped and access to Slack and Gmail revoked,” Balmain told the BBC.
Rachel Bonn, a Twitter marketing manager, said she had lost laptop access despite being eight months pregnant and raising a 9-month-old child.
Rumman Chowdhury, whose LinkedIn account listed her title as director of machine learning ethics at Twitter, posted a screenshot showing a failed login try on her work account. “Imagine feeling relief that you’re the one on the receiving end of the thanos snap,” Chowdhury added, referring to the villain in Marvel’s “Avengers” movies.
“Well, it’s been real,” tweeted Lauren Pinnella Traylor, a now-former onboarding support lead at Twitter. “The official (and very dehumanizing) layoff email has been received. The most amazing job with the incredible #OneTeam. The best may be yet to come, but for now, I’m absolutely gutted.”
Some ousted workers have filed suit against Musk and the firm, alleging they did not receive adequate notice.