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After the layoff of about 50% of Twitter’s staff on Friday following its $44 billion acquisition of Elon Musk, the bird company is now reportedly reaching dozens of employees to return to work.
According to a report by Bloombergsome of those who were asked to return were accidentally fired.
Some were shown the door before the new management understood that their work might be needed to build the new features for the short online platform Musk wants.
After half of the company was laid off on Friday, a select number of ex-Twitter employees are being asked to return to their positions – some allegedly fired by mistake
Musk previously said there was no choice but to impose massive layoffs as the company loses hundreds of millions of dollars every year and needs a financial overhaul.
In a move widely anticipated for weeks, Twitter cut nearly 3,700 jobs via email on Friday. Many employees learned their job was terminated after their access to corporate systems, such as Slack and email, was abruptly cut off.
On Friday night, Musk tweeted, “Unfortunately, if the company loses more than $4 million a day, there is no choice.”
“Everyone who left was offered a three-month layoff, which is 50% more than required by law,” he wrote.
Musk has previously hinted at a determination to restore the company’s financial health, which would almost certainly involve massive layoffs.
The company still has about 3,700 employees. The remaining ones are being pushed by Musk to work quickly to develop and implement new features.
There have been reports of employees sleeping in the office — something Musk himself does — to meet freshly imposed deadlines.
The firing and recruiting frenzy is taking place amid a number of new features that the bird app plans to roll out in the near future – including the blue tick subscription program
Change comes fast and furious as the world’s richest man took his position as CEO of Twitter. His deal to buy the company for a staggering $44 billion was closed at the end of October.
Over the weekend, Twitter rolled out the new Twitter Blue plan, which offers the verification check to any user willing to pay more than $8 per month.
The company said — largely through Musk’s personal account — that it will soon be launching additional new features, including fewer ads, the ability to post longer videos, and a feature that allows users to prioritize replies, mentions, and searches.
On Sunday, the New York Times reported that the company will postpone changes to its blue check program until after Tuesday’s midterm elections.
Workers have reportedly raised the point that any abrupt change could be used to create chaos on the site in the days leading up to the election.
According to Silicon Valley reporter Casey Newton, employees who stayed in the Twitter Slack channel after Friday were asked over the weekend to nominate “names and motivations” of ex-employees who may still be useful to the company.
Twitter has not yet commented on the decision to recall some of the people released Friday.
Musk is making big changes quickly at Twitter – though the speed of that change could be hampered by his decision to cut the company’s workforce in half
In recent days, Musk’s own tweets have been half the story coming out of Twitter HQ, the billionaire publicly pondering ways the product could be changed and mocking some of his high-profile critics.
After criticism from notable progressives, including New York City Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and actor Mark Ruffalo, Musk tweeted a “hot take.
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“Not everything AOC says is 100% accurate,” he wrote in response to a sentiment from Ruffalo.
The day before, Ruffalo had tweeted, “Elon.
Please—for the love of decency—get off Twitter, hand the keys to someone who actually does this, and get on with running Tesla and SpaceX.”
“You destroy your credibility. It just doesn’t look right,” he added.
On Saturday, Twitter CEO Elon Musk responded to Mark Ruffalo on Twitter, telling the actor not to believe everything AOC says.
Also over the weekend, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey logged in to apologize to current and former Twitter employees.
Addressing Musk’s acquisition, which he previously said he supported, he apologized for growing the company “too fast” and said Twitter employees “will always find a way, no matter how difficult the moment.
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The co-founder rolled over his 18 million shares into the company’s Elon Musk era rather than making a payout. His shares correspond to an approximately 2.4 percent stake in the company.
This means he will be one of Twitter’s largest investors in the company, contributing roughly $1 billion to Musk’s $44 billion purchase.
In the course of his acquisition, Musk almost immediately dissolved Twitter’s board of directors upon purchasing the company, leaving Dorsey one of the few stakeholders with ties to the previous leadership.
He joins Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and the Qatar Investment Authority as major investors.
Dorsey has faced backlash over his decision to leave Twitter in 2021 to work on his payment company Block, formerly known as Square. He first founded the company in 2006, was kicked out of the top job in 2008 and returned in 2015.
He expressed the ill-wishers in a subsequent tweet: “I am grateful for and love everyone who has ever worked on Twitter. I don’t expect that to be mutual at this point…or ever…and I understand.”