Image: © MichaelVi/Stock.adobe.com
There are reports that at least 50 staff have been impacted by the latest round of cuts, while the remaining workforce has likely dropped to less than 2,000.
Twitter has begun another wave of job cuts, with reports that the company’s product team has been reduced in size.
First reported by The Information, it is estimated that at least 50 employees were let go on Saturday 25 February, though sources told The New York Times yesterday (26 February) that this number could be as high as 200.
Among those getting cut are Esther Crawford, Twitter’s director of product management. Crawford first joined Twitter in 2020 after the social media platform acquired Squad, the screen-sharing social app that she co-founded.
She emerged as one of Elon Musk’s most loyal managers since he took over the company last October, heading various products including the platform’s revamped Twitter Blue subscription service.
Last November, Crawford shared an image of herself sleeping in one of Twitter’s offices and said it was necessary when “your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines”.
When your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork https://t.co/UBGKYPilbD
— Esther Crawford ✨ (@esthercrawford) November 2, 2022
In a recent tweet, Crawford said “the worst take” people could have is that her optimism or hard work at Twitter was “a mistake”.
“Those who jeer and mock are necessarily on the sidelines and not in the arena,” Crawford said. “I’m deeply proud of the team for building through so much noise and chaos.”
Another product manager who got cut is Martijn de Kuijper, who tweeted that he woke up and realised he had been locked out of his email. De Kuijper founded Revue, an editorial newsletter tool that Twitter acquired in 2021.
Musk has cut staff numbers multiple times since he acquired Twitter last October, when the company had roughly 7,500 staff worldwide.
Within a couple weeks of acquiring the company, Musk had reportedly laid off roughly 50pc of the workforce. Various senior staff members also resigned following his takeover, while other staff left after Musk issued an ultimatum to sign up for “long hours at high intensity” or leave.
Alex Heath of The Verge tweeted that the company likely has less than 2,000 employees, with the latest round of cuts impacting various departments including ads and engineering.
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