Twitter CEO Elon Musk told employees he is done laying off workers after about half of the company's workforce was either laid off or resigned. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI |
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Nov. 22 (UPI) -- Elon Musk told Twitter employees during a company meeting Tuesday he is done laying off staff and looking to recruit software engineers and salespeople.
Musk laid off about half of Twitter's employees in recent weeks after completing his $44 billion purchase of the company. Many other employees resigned in the face of his brash style of operating his businesses. The Verge reports Musk held an "all-hands" meeting to encourage his remaining employees to make referrals for new recruits.
"In terms of critical hires, I would say people who are great at writing software are the highest priority," Musk said during the meeting, according to The Verge. "Twitter recruiters have already started reaching out to outside engineers to see if they want to join 'Twitter 2.0-an Elon company.'"
Musk emailed Twitter staff on Friday, ordering "Anyone who actually writes software," to report to him that afternoon. He also told them to deliver bullet-point summaries related to their coding work. There are no open jobs posted on Twitter's careers page.
The CEO issued an ultimatum to his employees last week, forcing them to choose between "hardcore" intensity and hours or leaving the company and receiving a three-month severance package.
During Tuesday's meeting, Musk reassured employees that he does not plan to move operations to Texas. Twitter is headquartered in San Francisco while his other companies Tesla and SpaceX are based in Texas.
"If we want to move the headquarters to Texas I think it would play into the idea that Twitter has gone from being left-wing to right-wing, which is not the case," Musk reportedly told employees. "This is not a right-wing takeover of Twitter. It is a moderate-wing takeover of Twitter."
Hundreds of employees chose to resign, according to the Washington Post, leaving several departments critical to Twitter's system performance sorely understaffed.
The changes to the company structure under Musk have been swift and stark. He announced an end to remote work accommodations, outside of certain exceptions, more than a week ago. He largely dismantled the human resources and content moderation departments, leading to concern from the outside about how Twitter will handle various abuses within the company and on the social media platform.
In 2021, Twitter had about 7,500 employees. There are now about 2,700 employees and Musk laid off about 5,000 contractors.
