Elon Musk Reportedly Plans MASSIVE Twitter Layoffs To Cut Costs

Billionaire Elon Musk officially acquired Twitter less than a week ago and many are already unhappy with the changes he plans to implement.

The Tesla CEO called the current Twitter blue verification system "bulls---" in a tweet earlier this week and introduced a new plan that would allow anyone to buy a blue checkmark for $8 per month, down from $20.

Although many have pointed out that the blue checkmark system is a way to validate official celebrity, government, and brand accounts, Musk seems convinced that charging for the blue checkmark is one of the best ways to create a revenue stream for the social media company.

Another way he plans to cut costs? By firing over half its workforce.

Although the SpaceX CEO had already fired Chief Executive Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, and Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s head of legal policy, when he took over Twitter, it looks like they were only the first to go.

On Wednesday, Insider reported that Elon Musk plans to cut about 3,700 people in the workforce, according to two sources familiar with the company and an internal memo.

Insider had previously reported that a type of review known as a stack ranking of workers had been occurring shortly before Musk formally took control over Twitter on October 28. They reported that Vice Presidents have been compiling lists of workers in their departments and making two lists: one list of workers they want to keep, and another list of workers they want to lay off.

Insider reported that those lists were sent not only to Musk and a transition team, but also to Musk's personal lawyer, Alex Spiro.

It remains to be seen how much Twitter employees actually know about the upcoming layoffs, which are expected to take place on Friday, November 4. Although there were reportedly 8,200 employees working at Twitter in June, the head count dropped to 7,500 as of late September, after hundreds of workers allegedly left after Musk made it clear that he planned to follow through with his proposed $44 billion dollar deal.

If over 3,700 people really are let go on Friday, it would mean that Musk had laid off about half of Twitter's remaining workforce.

Although Elon Musk has received criticism for the way he handles his workers at his other companies, namely Tesla and SpaceX, he is now being accused of carrying over that same behavior to Twitter. Insider reported that the 51-year-old entrepreneur is requiring employees to work "literally 24/7" to meet his product demands, with employees working in 12-hour shifts around the world to keep progress moving.

One Twitter employee shared a photo of his boss appearing to sleep on the office floor in a sleeping bag only days after Musk took over the company. The Twitter employee in the photo has been identified as Esther Crawford, director of product management. The photo shows Crawford wearing an eye mask and curled up in a sleeping bag on top of a sleeping mat.

Even Jones, a product manager at Twitter Spaces, tweeted the photo around 2 AM ET on Wednesday, adding, "When you need something from your boss at elon twitter."

Crawford retweeted the photo, adding, "When your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork." Crawford then proceeded to defend the new company culture in a series of tweets defending the "cultural transition."

"Since some people are losing their minds I'll explain: doing hard things requires sacrifice (time, energy, etc)," she tweeted. "I have teammates around the world who are putting in the effort to bring something new to life so it's important to me to show up for them & keep the team unblocked."

"I work with amazingly talented & ambitious people here at Twitter and this is not a normal moment in time," she continued. "We are less than 1wk into a massive business & cultural transition. People are giving it their all across all functions: product, design, eng, legal, finance, marketing, etc."

"I love my family and I’m grateful they understand that there are times where I need to go into overdrive to grind and push in order to deliver," she added. "Building new things at Twitter's scale is very hard to do. I'm lucky to be doing this work alongside some of the best people in tech."