Washington: Elon Musk introduced major changes in the Twitter just a week after the acquisition and sacked half of its 7,500 employees on Friday.
According to the an internal document , “about 50 per cent” of employees had been affected and denied access to the company’s computers and emails on an urgent basis.
Michelle Austin, Twitter’s director of public policy for the United States and Canada, said: “I woke up with the news that my time to work on Twitter is over. My heart is broken.”
Elon Musk tweeted in his first comment on the subject on Friday evening, “Twitter unfortunately has no choice but to sack staff. The company is suffering more than $4 million a day.”
Before the layoffs, Twitter has asked employees to stay at home and come to work in the office only after the email is received. A dismissed employee, who did not wish to be named, said, “This is a very inhuman way of treating people. They are trying to save money at all costs.”
Elon Musk has taken a loan of billions of dollars to pay for the $ 44 billion deal and sold shares worth $ 15.5 billion in his electric car company Tesla.
Musk’s teams are putting pressure on the remaining employees, company sources said. Tesla developers have been brought in to oversee the work of “Tweeps”. Those working in Twitter are called tweeps inside the company.
Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk are said to have to pay $1 billion in annual interest to pay for the Twitter deal. That’s why Musk is scrambling to find new ways to earn from Twitter. The idea of charging users $8 per month for a verified account is also included in this exercise.
This step will help in removing the potential harm caused by advertisers. Till now Twitter’s main source of revenue was advertisers. After Elon Musk bought Twitter, many of the world’s top brands have banned advertising. They fear that Musk will now control content on Twitter.