A minimum of 50 additional Twitter employees have been cut from the social media platform since Elon Musk purchased it for $44 billion last year, claims a new report.
These Saturday layoffs affected numerous engineering teams, including those specializing in advertising technology, which makes up the main Twitter app and the digital infrastructure that keeps its operations running, per The Information.
Bloomberg Technology posted its own piece on one of the layoffs, invoking a reference to former employee Esther Crawford, who reportedly slept in her bed in order to meet deadlines at the company.
“She’ll no longer have to #SleepWhereYouWork.”
She'll no longer have to #SleepWhereYouWork https://t.co/Huybp23mz2
— Bloomberg Technology (@technology) February 27, 2023
The New York Post reported that Reuters found this marks at least the eighth of a series of cuts since Musk assumed leadership of the company.
People booted from Twitter include senior product manager Martijn de Kuijper, whose Dutch digital newsletter startup, Revue, was acquired by Twitter for an unknown price in Jan. 2021.
“Waking up to find I’ve been locked out of my email. Looks like I’m let go. Now my Revue journey is really over,” de Kuijper posted on the platform early Sunday.
The Dutch startup was closed down on Feb. 18, reports the Post.
This news comes after the tech mogul reportedly fired almost 4,000 Twitter employees in the past few months, according to reports from around November 2022.
As the Post noted, many advertisers have pulled back and even canceled expenditures on Twitter after Musk, a self-described “free speech absolutist,” fully acquired the platform in October and unbanned numerous previously suspended users, such as former President Donald Trump.
He additionally brought a group of independent journalists on board to dive into internal records of the platform to uncover past instances of “free speech suppression.” The ensuing series of reports this has brought forth have been dubbed, “Twitter files.”
The initial drop from Musk’s platform discussed its decision to censor the New York Post after it dropped a bombshell story about Hunter Biden’s controversial laptop.
Musk, who has been heavily scrutinized by the mainstream media following his purchase of Twitter, laughed at his doubters after The Wall Street Journal put out a piece saying the company is facing at least nine lawsuits looking to secure over $14 million.
“Say what you want about me, but I acquired the world’s largest non-profit for $44B lol,” the tech mogul wrote online Tuesday.
