Elon Musk plans to lay off most of Twitter’s workforce if and when he becomes the owner of the social media company, according to leaked reports Thursday.
Musk has told prospective investors in his Twitter purchase that he plans to cut nearly 75% of Twitter’s employee base of 7,500 workers, leaving the company with a skeleton crew, according to the report.
The leaked reports first published in the Washingtonpost newspaper cited documents and unnamed sources familiar with the deliberations.
San Francisco-based Twitter and a representative for Musk attorney Alex Spiro did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
While job cuts have been expected regardless of the sale, the magnitude of Musk’s planned cuts is far more extreme than anything Twitter had planned.
Musk himself has alluded to the need to cull some of the company’s staff in the past, but he hadn’t given a specific number — at least not publicly.
In reaction to the planned downsizing of staff, one corporate governance expert asked; The billionaire’s pending Twitter takeover reportedly involves mass layoffs that could hinder the company’s ability to moderate content and alter the user experience. “What’s he gonna replace it with, AI?”
Data scientist Edwin Chen, a former Twitter executive who oversaw Twitter’s spam and health metrics, told media that Musk’s proposed cuts would be “unimaginable,” and would create a scenario in which “you’d have services going down and the people remaining not having the institutional knowledge to get them back up.”
Before Musk offered to buy the social media company, documents reviewed show “extensive plans” to cut staff and infrastructure costs—“including data centers that keep the site functioning for more than 200 million users that log on each day.”
“Musk told prospective investors in his deal to buy the company that he planned to get rid of nearly 75 percent of Twitter’s 7,500 workers, whittling the company down to a skeleton staff of just over 2,000.”
