The IT Nerd

This is going to be an interesting day. And not in a good way.

So it appears that the layoffs have begun at Twitter. And here’s the rather brutal details:

“It’s going East to West,” one person said. People working for Twitter in London were first to find out, then New York, then people working remotely in the Midwest. California, Twitter’s biggest hub, came last, multiple employees said.

“My entire team is gone,” one person affected by the layoffs in New York said. They worked on a team of 30-plus people. Another person estimated that 90% of their team was cut.

Meanwhile, Musk ignored the layoffs publicly, tweeting “Why is small talk even legal” as his employees were being let go. 

By closer to 11 pm PT, more than 1,000 people at Twitter had lost their jobs, according to employees and messages seen by Insider. The cuts went across the company, from Singapore to the U.K. to Fan Francisco, hitting every department. Content moderation and health, advertising, data storage, product, legal, program management, all were hit with layoffs. Cuts were deep in most areas, but some were so drastic one person said they “don’t know how we keep things going in some areas.” 

Hundreds of Twitter workers began posting to Twitter about losing their jobs, too. Many wrote of gratitude for the years they spent working at the platform and for their colleagues. “Best job I ever had,” one person said. “So it ends,” another wrote.

Musk may be ignoring the carnage that he’s causing, but he can’t ignore this lawsuit that’s been filed that will make his life miserable:

The suit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco names five current or former workers as plaintiffs, one of whom was told he was terminated effective Tuesday, according to the lawsuit. It names Twitter as the defendant.

Three other staff members have been locked out of their Twitter accounts as of Thursday with no formal notice of a layoff, which they interpret to mean they will lose their jobs, according to the lawsuit.

“Twitter is now engaged in conducting mass layoffs without providing the required notice under the federal WARN Act,” the lawsuit says, referring to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act that requires 60-day notice for certain plant closings or mass layoffs.

As it typical for Musk, he didn’t think these layoffs through and now he’s likely to get owned in court. But I am a computer nerd, not a lawyer. I say that because the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act isn’t something that he can ignore. But knowing how he thinks, he will try. And there are similar laws in states including California where Twitter has its HQ. Thus I can see more lawsuits like this coming. Especially in California who I am pretty sure aren’t fans of Musk after he bashed them over taxes and regulation and moved Tesla’s HQ to Texas as a result. It might be payback time for that state.

Musk may have just made life a lot more complicated for himself. And a lot of people will enjoy seeing his squirm.

This entry was posted on November 4, 2022 at 8:40 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.