An internal memo sent to Twitter employees today says that they can expect to hear about their fate by 9AM PT on November 4th.
“In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” the memo reads.
There was a lot of concern swirling last weekend that Elon Musk would try to get out of paying them their vested stock due November 1st. He then tweeted that the rumor was “false.”
An internal Slack message I’ve seen says that employees will be receiving their final $54.20 stock payouts on the company’s next payroll due to arrive by November 11th. Shortly after the message was shared, the executive who wrote it, Chief Accounting Officer Robert Kaiden, disappeared from Slack and the company directory.
Musk is on the attendee list for a call starting now to review Twitter’s “RIF,” or reduction in force plan, according to a screenshot of the calendar event I obtained. David Sacks, a former PayPal executive Musk has tapped as an advisor, is also on the call.
Separately, several Twitter employees tell me they saw a discussion in a Slack channel today saying that the company is planning to cut roughly 3,800 employees, which would be about half the workforce. Employees are expecting to hear more by Friday.
All their work calendars were set to private today.
Esther Crawford, a Twitter product director who is leading the development of Musk’s paid verification system, retweeted a photo of her in a sleeping bag in a conference room and said: “When your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork.”
I previously reported that Musk told the team building the new Twitter Blue subscription that they have until November 7th to release it or be fired.
The company’s CMO, head of people, and ads leadership are all gone. Meanwhile, I’m told that some of Twitter’s biggest advertisers are expecting to soon have a call with Musk, who is with his advisors at Twitter’s NYC HQ this week. One of the biggest ad agencies, IPG, has already recommended that its clients pause their spending until there is more clarity on Twitter’s trust and safety approach under Musk.
Ad leader Sarah Personette said she resigned on Friday; engineering lead Nick Caldwell now lists himself as “former Twitter Exec;” and product leader Jay Sullivan deleted his Twitter bio. Meanwhile, former product chief Kayvon Beykpour — who was fired by ex-CEO Parag Agrawal in May — continues to be spotted around Twitter’s San Francisco office.
Twitter’s NYC employees have been told that non-work visitors aren’t allowed in the office this week, and that the office’s roof and 7th floor “will be closed to Tweeps all week”
On his first day, Twitter’s new ‘Chief Twit’ quietly changed the homepage to send a message.
