CLOSED SIGNALS LAUNCHES —
Twitter now employs fewer than 2,000 people, according to The New York Times.
More engineers, product managers and data scientists are on Twitter, as another round of layoffs has slashed 10 percent of the remaining workforce, according to the New York Times. Multiple sources familiar with the matter told TIME that 200 employees were affected.
Saturday night – like Twitter layoffs in November That’s what happened during the 2019-2020 – when some employees suddenly logged out of their corporate email accounts and laptops to find they were about to lose their jobs. There are now estimated to be fewer than 2,000 employees left.
According to the Financial Times, the affected Among them was Esther Crawford, who enthusiastically embraced Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s Twitter 2.0 vision and proved so committed that she became CEO of Twitter Payments. In November, Musk told employees that no more layoffs were planned, pointing to Twitter Payments, a product that enables peer-to-peer payments and e-commerce on the platform, as a product that could save Twitter from bankruptcy. Now, the number of employees on the Twitter Payments team has been reduced from 30 to fewer than eight, according to The Times, and as Twitter’s funding woes drag on, it’s unclear whether the product remains a top priority.
Ars could not immediately be reached for Twitter or Crawford post Comment.
Crawford – Ex-Twitter Senior Criticized as a “sycophant”—tweeting that she’s “deeply proud of the team building out of so much noise and chaos.” She also said, “Seeing me go all out on Twitter 2.0, you might The worst perception one could have is that I was wrong for my optimism or my efforts.”
Multiple lawsuits have been filed by employees affected by Twitter’s mass layoffs. The ex-employees claim they received less severance than they were entitled to. For executives hit by the latest round of layoffs, including Crawford and Haraldur Thorleifsson, the promised severance packages are even higher. The Times reported that they were so expensive that sources familiar with what was included in their severance packages expected it could cost Twitter more to fire them than to keep them.
Ex-employees sue also alleging that Twitter was out of business during layoffs Discriminates disproportionately against women, people on family leave and people with disabilities. So far, Twitter has successfully pushed most of these lawsuits out of court and into separate arbitration with the company.
Musk is under fire for accessibility team layoffs
Just before Twitter announced the latest round of layoffs on Saturday, Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) wrote a letter to Musk on Friday urging him to rehire the accessibility team, which was completely laid off during previous layoffs.
This team has previously advocated for improvements on behalf of people with disabilities Their Twitter experience includes sharing insights on making everything from emojis to ads more accessible to the “approximately 1 billion people around the world” who “have some form of disability.”
Markey said that Musk decided to disband Twitter last year. The accessibility team and the recent decision to charge for access to Twitter’s API removed features that many users relied on. This includes adding automatic alt text to images and automatically generating closed captions on Twitter Spaces.
Markey told Musk the consequences would be “devastating” . He claims that while Twitter has never been perfect when it comes to accessibility, it has gotten worse under Musk’s leadership.
“All these changes under your leadership Shows a disregard for the needs of people with disabilities,” Markey wrote. “As a result, Twitter users with disabilities are questioning their ability to continue using the platform, and many have left it entirely.”
Markey asked Musk to explain why Twitter eliminated its accessibility team by March 17, confirm whether Twitter would commit to rehiring the team, and outline how Twitter would address the report Neglected needs by users.
“I urge you to restore Twitter immediately ’s accessibility team and take all necessary steps to facilitate accessibility,” wrote Markey.
