On Elon Musk’s first day as owner of Twitter, the social giant began laying off employees, including data engineers, self-identified former employees told CNBC.
A person who walked out of Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters and identified themselves as a Twitter data engineer said their director in person just laid them off.
One employee at Twitter, awaiting information about layoffs or projects, told CNBC they were in the dark for the most part. Press reports before the deal closed said that Musk had planned cuts as deep as 75% of the headcount.
Musk finally took over the firm on Thursday, ending a months-long legal saga. The billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO initially agreed to buy the company for $44 billion, but soon after tried to abandon the deal because he claimed Twitter was not forthcoming enough about spam accounts on the platform. Twitter has denied that and went to court to try to get Musk to complete the deal.
Prior to the original trial date earlier this month, Musk agreed once again to close the deal. The judge gave Musk until Friday at 5 p.m. to close the deal, or else set a new trial date.
