Laid-off Twitter Employee Says Musk's Leadership 'Failed': Idea Of Making People's Lives Better 'Went To Garbage'

Twitter laid off thousands of workers in November 2022 in departments across the company, a move justified by its CEO Elon Musk. Then in January, the company laid off employees responsible for global content moderation. 

Amidst the job cuts, several Twitter employees have filed class action lawsuits, and the number of laid-off staff taking legal action against the company is going up. 

In an interview with the BBC, Lisa Bloom, the lawyer representing the sacked employees, said she's taken on around 100 laid-off Twitter workers in the U.S. as clients, and that "the number goes up daily."

One of the laid-off employees, Amir Shevat, told the BBC that Musk had "failed" in leading the company.

"We wanted to make people's lives more pleasant and productive," Shevat said. "And all of that went to garbage when Elon bought the company."

Shevat was the head of product for the Twitter developer platform and was in charge of about 150 staff, most of whom were also abruptly laid off. 

"We got an email saying there was some sort of restructuring, and then what happened is, I was communicating with my team, and one after the other, they were telling me that their computer got 'bricked,'" he said. 

Also Read: Zuckerberg Says He Was More Thoughtful About Meta Layoffs Than Musk’s Job Cuts At Twitter

"It was a very, very hard experience which left many of the engineers, who cared deeply about the company, very discouraged," he added. 

Shevat told the BBC that he was not "objecting to the downsizing", but rather how it was done at Twitter.

"The way to do it is in a legal, empathetic, and highly communicative way. And in all of these, Musk, in his leadership, failed," he said.

He also said that Twitter employees were initially promised four months' pay as severance by the company but were ultimately offered only one month - with "zero justification" for the reduction in the package.

Shevat is now entering into an arbitration process with his former employer.  

Earlier, it was reported that the social media platform had shed about 80% of its employees since Musk took over, and the headcount hovers at around 1,300 employees. Later, Musk quashed the report and said Twitter has about 2,300 active employees. 

Twitter employees have reportedly said that the company plans to close many international and smaller offices within the U.S.

The company explained the culling of contractors as a part of a "reprioritization and savings exercise."

Twitter has been bleeding advertisers since Musk took over, with several high-profile companies pausing promotions on the platform. 

The company posted a net loss of $270 million in the second quarter that ended June 30, 2022, compared to a profit of $66 million in the same period the prior year. 

Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion and is under pressure to cut costs after making a deal in which he overpaid, according to some analysts.

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