Nearly 2 months after announcing a hiring freeze, microblogging site Twitter has fired 30 per cent of its talent acquisition team. Confirming the development, a Twitter spokesperson shared that these employees will get severance packages and the remaining recruitment staff will be reprioritised owing to a decreased hiring.
The spokesperson, however, refrained from revealing the exact number of employees affected by the layoff. The microblogging platform is pausing most hiring and backfills, aside from the most critical roles, according to a TechCrunch report.
The layoffs come as Twitter still awaits Musk’s $44 billion acquisition deal to close after it was put on hold in May, just a few days after being announced in late April/ Musk said his deal was “on hold” over the number of spam and fake accounts on the platform.
With this, Twitter has become the latest tech firm to join a list of companies that have announced layoffs. Last month, Coinbase Global Inc. said it would cut 1,100 employees, or 18 per cent of its staff. Microsoft Corp., Snap Inc. and Facebook parent Meta, have also announced reductions in hiring.
Some fired Twitter employees also shared their experience on LinkedIn. A recruiter who was laid off from Twitter wrote, “I am overwhelmed; nervous and anxious but trying to stay optimistic of the future.”
Another affected person stated that those employees who were laid off woke up on Thursday to 30-minute meetings put onto their calendars.
Meanwhile, Twitter executives on Thursday told reporters that the site removes more than 1 million spam accounts each day. The company reiterated that spam accounts were well under 5 per cent of users who are served advertising, a figure that has been unchanged in its public filings since 2013.
