Elon Musk dismissed several dozen Twitter workers overnight on Wednesday, most of whom were engineers, according to two sources familiar with the company’s actions.
The firings were unexpected within Twitter. During an all-hands meeting earlier this week, Musk stated that there would be no further layoffs at the firm.
According to one of the persons dismissed overnight on Wednesday, the employees were notified that they were being put off for performance reasons and were offered one month of severance pay.
According to the two persons, the termination procedure was identical to that of previously laid-off employees: access to work equipment and computers was restricted, and a notification of termination was issued to impacted employees’ email accounts.
Musk has previously laid off, quit, or dismissed thousands of Twitter employees, leaving crucial personnel overworked. According to the sources, Twitter teams are already so short-staffed that many employees have had to work on Thanksgiving.
As previously reported by Insider, the firings are understood to be a result of Musk’s new policy forcing Twitter engineers and other workers working on code or technical projects to inform him every week on what they worked on, what they wanted to finish, and particular lines of code they created. While these reports are usually due on Fridays, they were delayed this week owing to the Thanksgiving holiday.
Twitter recruiters have reportedly hired external engineers to work for the firm under Musk, and Musk has even hired a hoaxer who deceived the press into believing he had been fired off from Twitter. According to one of the persons, these changes prompted personnel to assume Musk had broken his tendency of terminating people unexpectedly.