New York: Elon Musk has defended his decision to effect a major round of layoffs in offices around the world, including India.
The new owner of the popular social media platform claimed that there was no choice but to sack people as the company was losing millions of dollars every day.
“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 tweeted.
A majority of staff in Twitter India – which had over 200 employees – have lost their jobs across all functions.
The world’s richest person, who took over Twitter last week after a $44 billion buyout, hinted what was to come when he said a day earlier that ‘activist groups’ were ‘pressuring advertisers’.
“Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists. Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America,” Musk said on Friday.
The company had sent an internal note to its staff on Friday, to let them know about the harsh truth.
“In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” stated the memo, hours before the mass layoffs commenced.
Several employees have sued Twitter, contending that the company was conducting mass layoffs without giving the required 60-day advance notice, in violation of federal and California law.
