Massive layoffs at Twitter impact Boulder office and elsewhere, with employees ‘the last ones to know’

Elon Musk‘s Twitter takeover quickly took a toll on employees located in Boulder and elsewhere following a mammoth round of layoffs Friday — a week after the billionaire’s acquisition of the social media platform.

Twitter employees learned about the decision via email, which said they’d know their employment statuses — laid off or not — by 10 a.m. MT on Friday. It didn’t specify how many of the company’s 7,500 workers would be impacted.

The extent of the layoffs in Boulder is still unclear, but at least one ex-employee said she knows of former colleagues who lost their jobs. Twitter’s communications team, which once included 80 to 100 workers, is now down to two, Bloomberg News reported.

Musk’s plan is to cut about half of Twitter’s labor force, booting around 3,700 employees in the process, according to Bloomberg. “At least some” will receive paychecks until Jan. 4 — a fact learned after the filing of a class action lawsuit against the company for not providing the mandated 60-day notice.

“Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue,” Musk tweeted Friday morning, blaming the plunge on “activist groups pressuring advertisers.” He has yet to address the companywide layoffs, as of 1 p.m. Friday.

Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists.

Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2022

“Everyone knew there was a pretty decent chance” of layoffs, said Elaine Reddy, a former Twitter employee in Boulder. “I’m shocked by the size and the way it was handled.”

Reddy worked for the company around seven years ago, and now handles communications for a climate tech policy firm. She confirmed the layoffs of “a lot of my former colleagues who I worked with for years” in roles from engineering to account management.

“It just seemed the Twitter employees were the last ones to know, which is unfortunate,” Reddy added in a telephone interview.

She notes a “stark contrast” between the tweets written by former employees expressing gratitude for their time at the company and the messages from leadership.

“It’s wonderful that Twitter finally has a leader who’s using Twitter, but not best practice to not acknowledge layoffs via Twitter,” Reddy said. “When you’ve shown such a lack of empathy for employees, it’s gonna be an uphill battle to attract the talent they need moving forward.”

Others in the Denver area are sending well wishes to Boulder employees — past and present — as news continues to roll in.

Hyper-local tweet but thinking of all the Twitter employees here in Boulder County who just lost their jobs and what that’s going to mean for our area that’s already been hit with so much

— Jessica Mason Pieklo (@Hegemommy) November 4, 2022

Alan Stein, founder, CEO and chief accelerator at Kadima Careers, runs a professional training and coaching service to help candidates secure jobs at tech companies. He previously worked for Google and Facebook.

Stein described the layoffs — and Musk’s approach to them — as “not shocking at all,” pointing to his proclivity “to make a ripple in the industry.”

He noted the CEO’s appreciation of engineering talent, but Twitter is “also a big sales and media organization, and my hunch is he probably undervalues some of that talent and the need for those sort of roles.”

Other tech companies aren’t ready to absorb those former Twitter employees, given industrywide layoffs at Stripe, Chime and others, Stein said. “Companies are still hiring, but I think there’s going to be a surplus of talent on the market and it won’t be as quick to absorb right away.”

Once Musk took the helm of the company, he almost immediately caused turmoil on the social media platform. A Nov. 1 tweet announced that verified users must soon pay an $8 monthly subscription to retain the blue checkmarks by their handles.