Twitter has laid off thousands of employees in the past week, and it hasn’t gone smoothly to say the least — for either the employees getting the ax or some of the ones tasked with firing them.
One engineering manager at Twitter received a list from Musk’s advisers naming hundreds of people the manager was supposed to fire, and he subsequently threw up into a trash can nearby, according to an article published in the New York Times on Friday chronicling the turmoil at Twitter during Musk’s first two weeks in charge.
The company cut 3,700 jobs last Friday, roughly 50% of its workforce. Some employees said they lost access to work platforms like Slack and their email before the layoffs were announced, and others said they were later offered their jobs back after Musk’s advisers realized they were necessary for the company to function.
Several laid-off employees have even filed a class-action lawsuit against Twitter, saying the company persuaded them not to look for jobs elsewhere in the period leading up to Musk’s $44 billion takeover of the company and later reneged on previously promised severance packages.
- The New York Times also reported in its article Friday that Musk demanded a payroll audit to verify Twitter’s employees were “real humans” before they’d receive regularly scheduled bonuses and subsequently be laid off.
