These aren’t the first cuts Musk has made to the social media platform’s workforce: Upon taking control of Twitter on Oct. 27, he immediately fired some of the company’s top executives, including its CEO, Parag Agrawal, and senior adviser Vijaya Gadde, who was in charge of online security.
A lawsuit has already been filed challenging the layoffs, Bloomberg reported. On Thursday, before the round of cuts began, Twitter staff in California filed a class action lawsuit for violation of the Law of Notification of Adjustment and Recycling of Workers, which requires companies to notify 60 days in advance of mass layoffs. Three of the employees who filed the lawsuit said they were locked out of their Twitter accounts on Thursday, “which they took to be a sign they were being fired,” the filing says.
Musk is under tremendous pressure to turn a profit. Twitter’s annual returns show that while the social media company has increased revenue in recent years, it has spent more than it earned, operating at a loss. And Musk bought the company at an inflated price. when the bought his first share on twitter it was Commerce at $33.03. In the end, he closed the deal for $44 billion, paying $54.20 per share.
And while the company is no longer publicly traded, it has private investors to keep happy. Among them is Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia, who is now the second largest investor on Twitter after Musk. Another investor, Changpeng Zhao, CEO and founder of bitcoin firm Binance, has expressed support for staff cuts. Speaking at Web Summit, a tech industry conference, on Thursday, he said that “a smaller workforce would make more sense.”
