A large number of contract workers have reportedly been affected by a recent job cut at Twitter. This comes a week after the platform recently acquired by Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk, dismissed almost half of its staff as advertisers fled the bird app.
Twitter Terminates 80% of Total Contract Workers
This recent layoff was an abrupt and harsher one. Full-time Twitter employees shared internal communications with CNBC, stating that workers discovered they were fired after suddenly losing access to work systems such as Slack over the weekend. Managers even were informed of the job cuts when their workers just disappeared from the system.
According to a tweet by Platformer, 4,400 of Twitter's 5,500 contract employees were affected by the recent job cuts. Per the source, Twitter's critical infrastructure and content moderation could be impacted by the latest layoffs.
Update: company sources tell me that yesterday Twitter eliminated ~4,400 of its ~5,500 contract employees, with cuts expected to have significant impact to content moderation and the core infrastructure services that keep the site up and running.
— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) November 13, 2022
People inside are stunned.
Anonymous Twitter insiders told the press that contract employees working overseas were especially affected by the recent job cuts, many of them working from India.
Some contractors told Axios they were concerned about receiving their final paycheck because many ended up on teams with no full-time employees after Twitter's first round of layoffs. Some affected workers are concerned that the layoffs will have a financial impact on their families.
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The informants also told news outlets that the dismissal occurred without any internal notice before the contractors with whom they were working were terminated. Platformer also reported how contract workers were terminated without notice in the middle of work.
The source said that a contractor was deactivated while making critical changes to child safety workflows. Some contractors even learned about their layoffs from the Platformer tweet itself. Check out the tweet below for reference:
You don’t have to treat people this way pic.twitter.com/YLBJdJqvkH
— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) November 13, 2022
According to reports, Twitter has since contacted some full-time workers about re-hiring them after realizing that their expertise was essential to ongoing projects.
Layoffs Could Cripple Content Moderation
Elon Musk has been open about his plans to cut jobs at Twitter since his bid to buy the company. Even though many claimed that such actions would significantly affect Twitter's ability to regulate harmful content and avoid data security crises, Twitter still went through with the action to reduce its payroll by about $800 million.
Forbes also says that the company's job cuts apparently include vital infrastructure such as data centers, which might make securing data more complicated and defending against security risks for Twitter's more than 200 million estimated daily active users.
Musk addressed the layoffs in a tweet on Nov. 4, writing, "Regarding Twitter's reduction in force, unfortunately, there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required"
The press has already requested comment from Twitter about the latest rounds of layoffs, and there has not been any at the time of writing.
Stay posted here for the latest updates on the matter.
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by John Lopez
