Former Twitter employees are flocking to social media after being laid off from the company, just a week into new owner and CEO Elon Musk’s takeover.
Several employees spent their day tweeting their goodbyes, while Musk revealed that brands had halted their advertisements, leading to a “massive drop in revenue.”
Musk tweeted late on Friday, 4 November, that the cuts were necessary as “unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day.”
Yash Agarwal, former public policy associate for Twitter India and South Asia, tweeted, “Just got laid off. Bird App, it was an absolute honour, the greatest privilege ever to be a part of this team, this culture.
Agarwal’s tweet went viral after Twitter users appreciated his positive outlook to life.
Several employees have tweeted using the hashtag #LoveWhereYouWorked and a salute emoji to signify their exit from the company.
Alphonzo Terrell, former global head of social and editorial, whose team operated Twitter's offical account on their platform said, "wont get to Tweet it, but here it is - the last @Twitter tweet from my team and I."
The image was a Tweet from their official account that said, "bye literally everyone."
A former product lead at Twitter Blue, Smita Mittal Gupta, who also lost her job after more than seven years, appreciated her time with fellow Twitter employees, or ‘Tweeps’, and said:
“Twitter was so much more than a job, it felt like home, where coworkers became lifelong friends. The love and solidarity tonight is a true testament of the culture Tweeps have built over the years. It's been an honor.”
“And just like that, I’m out. Thank you for everything, @Twitter. I’ll miss you,” tweeted London Lee, a former Global Social Impact team member.
While there were several positive reactions and resounding shows of support for laid-off twitter employees, many questioned the method used to carry out the lay-offs and pointed out the circumstances of several employees who have now lost their jobs.
It is important to know that Twitter sent a memo to its employees stating that staff who were being let go would receives emails on their personal account, while those being kept on will receive notice on their work email. The memo was leaked on Friday.
Rachel Bonn, marketing manager at Twitter’s San Francisco HQ, said that she was laid off despite being eight months pregnant, even as she raises a 9-month-old child. She also lost laptop access.
Chris Young, who worked in entertainment partnerships, encountered a similar snag and said, “Well this isn’t looking promising. Can’t log into emails. Mac wont turn on.”
“But so grateful this is happening at 3am. Really appreciate the thoughtfulness on the timing front guys,” Younie added.
Simon Balmain, former senior community manager, tweeted and said, “Looks like I’m unemployed y’all. Just got remotely logged out of my work laptop and removed from Slack. #OneTeam”
Director for Twitter’s Machine Learning Ethics, Transparency and Accountability (META) team and noted Bengali American data scientist Rumman Chowdhury also lost her job, and said, “Has it already started? Happy layoff eve!”
She later added: "It's already started—just had the honor of being thanos snapped."
Chowdhury refers to a scene from the 2018 Marvel Avengers: Infinity War, where half of all life in the universe disintegrates after protagonist Thanos snaps his fingers.
Joan Deitchman, who also worked on the META team, said, "Yep, the team is gone."
"The team that was researching and pushing for algorithmic transparency and algorithmic choice. The team that was studying algorithmic amplification. The team that was inventing and building ethical AI tooling and methodologies. All that is gone."
According to several employees and former employees at Twitter, the layoffs have heavily hit the human rights team, META team, internet technology team, curation team, communications department, public policy departments, and areas of product trust and social good.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)