Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco.
Adam Jeffery | CNBC
[Editor’s note: After CNBC published details of an interview with people who claimed to be fired employees of Twitter, several reports emerged suggesting it was a hoax. CNBC could not confirm the identities of the individuals.]
On the first day Elon Musk took control Twitter, a person who walked out of the company’s headquarters in San Francisco and identified himself as a data engineer there said they had just been laid off. CNBC was unable to immediately verify the person’s identity, and another person made a similar request.
An employee at Twitter, awaiting news of layoffs or projects, told CNBC they’ve been largely in the dark. The person noted that Musk was meeting with low-level technical managers — a welcome gesture for some. Newspapers reported before the deal closed that Musk was planning to cut staff by as much as 75%.
Twitter did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the layoffs.
Musk finally took over the company on Thursday, ending a months-long legal saga. The Tesla billionaire and SpaceX CEO initially agreed to buy the company for $44 billion, but soon tried to pull out of the deal because he claimed the upcoming Twitter wasn’t enough about spam accounts on the platform. this platform. Twitter denied that and went to court to try to get Musk to close the deal.
Ahead of the initial test date earlier this month, Musk agreed again to close the deal. The judge gave Musk until 5 p.m. Friday to close the deal, or else set a new trial date.
On Thursday, several top executives left the company, including Parag CEO Agrawal and CNBC’s Ned Segal CFO David Faber. report. Twitter’s head of legal, trust and safety policy Vijaya Gadde was also fired.
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
-CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.
