Musk tells investors he wants to sack 75% of Twitter staff once he takes over: Report

According to a report in
The Washington Post, Musk has told prospective investors in his Twitter purchase that he plans to cut nearly 75 per cent of Twitter’s employee base of 7,500 workers, leaving the company with a skeleton crew. The report, published on Thursday, cited documents and unnamed sources familiar with the deliberations.

However, Twitter quickly issued a clarification to staff after the report came out that there are no plans for company-wide layoffs since it signed a deal to be acquired by Musk.

Twitter General Counsel Sean Edgett emailed employees on Thursday saying the company does not plan layoffs, according to a source who viewed the email, news agency
Reuters reported.

Rumours about job cuts in Twitter has been making the rounds for a while now, irrespective of the $44 billion Twitter buyout deal. The world’s richest man himself had previously spoken about cutting down Twitter’s workforce.However, Musk’s planned cuts are far more extreme than anything the micro-blogging company had planned.

With as drastic a reduction as Musk may be planning, the platform could quickly become overrun with harmful content and spam – the latter of which the Tesla CEO himself has said he’ll address if he becomes owner of the company.

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Amid the drama, Musk seems to be ‘excited’ to become the new Twitter boss, even though he feels like he is spending too much on the social media platform.

“I’m excited about the Twitter situation,” Musk said while fielding questions on a Tesla quarterly earnings call on Wednesday, as quoted by several media agencies.

“I think it’s an asset that has just sort of languished for a long time but has incredible potential, although obviously myself and the other investors are overpaying for Twitter right now,” Musk added.

After his initial offer in April to buy Twitter, Musk had tried to take the exit door, alleging the company understated the number of bot and spam accounts on the social media platform, which started a series of lawsuits between the two parties.

But earlier this month, the billionaire businessman reversed course and said he will proceed with the deal on original terms. Twitter had sued Musk, and a Delaware judge has given both sides until October 28 to work out details. Otherwise, there will be a trial in November.