Elon Musk Plans to Fire 50% Of Twitter Staff This Friday

In an effort to save costs, Elon Musk intends to fire about half of Twitter staff on Friday, according to a recent Bloomberg report. When Musk initially visited Twitter's San Francisco headquarters last week, he dismissed rumors that he was planning to fire 75% of the company's employees to calm the employees' fears. But reducing employees by 50%, or 3,700 workers, is still a significant reduction.

Musk Will Fire 50% Of Twitter Staff on Friday

According to Bloomberg, the precise number of layoffs may still vary, and the amount of severance to be provided is still being determined. However, one possibility is for workers to receive 60 days of compensation. In addition, it's unclear if Musk is attempting to circumvent the letter of the law by calling it 60 days of "severance," as California law requires large companies to give 60 days notice for such a significant workforce decrease. Furthermore, Musk also intends to change Twitter's flexible work-from-anywhere policy adopted at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak to one that requires all employees to report to the office. According to images shared on social media, Twitter employees have started sleeping at the workplace to meet the billionaire's strict deadlines. Musk believes that people who work from home are merely pretending to be employed. On another note, since taking over, Musk has been frantically attempting to find ways to increase Twitter's revenue while reducing expenses.

Some of Musk's plans on increasing Twitter's revenue

One strategy for making quick money, which has been publicly discussed on Twitter, is to charge a subscription fee for platform verification. Some right-wing influencers have a long-standing obsession with the so-called Blue Checkmark, which they believe confers some sort of special status, but which was actually put in place to stop people from using other people's likenesses to impersonate famous people or other people who might be targeted for trolling on the platform. Moreover, Musk appears to have settled on $8 as the magic number to charge for verification after much public debate. But it is still unclear how many people will actually sign up for the scheme. Additionally, Bloomberg reports that the new paid verification mechanism may launch as soon as Monday. But validated users would likely have several months before their badges were removed for non-payment. Interestingly, according to the unnamed Twitter employees who helped leak the information, plans for Twitter's new verification methodology may change, Bloomberg reports.