Twitter: Elon Musk reportedly fires additional 200 workers along with executive responsible for Blue service

Twitter has fired a further 200 workers from its streamlined workforce, according to the New York Times. The latest set of job losses has seen approximately 10% of Twitter’s remaining 2,000 workforce let go by the social media platform.

Elon Musk has overseen a large number of job cuts since he purchased the company last year, reducing its workforce from the 7,500 people it employed at the time of purchase, to the 2,000 remaining at the beginning of this year. Among those reported to have been let go is Esther Crawford, the chief executive of Twitter Payments, the team that was in charge of the Twitter Blue subscription model which has recently been introduced.

At the beginning of Musk’s reign in charge of Twitter, Crawford shared an image of her on Twitter sleeping on the floor of the company’s HQ, with the hashtag #sleepwhereyouwork. Employees were challenged to work longer hours to help the platform following the first lay-offs, as Musk looked to streamline the company and introduce new features. She shared yesterday that she was “deeply proud of my team” following her exit.

Other employees who were laid off shared on social media that the news was broken to them after they had been locked out of work emails. Elon Musk tweeted on Sunday; “Hope you have a good Sunday. First day of the rest of your life.” These latest job losses follow a number of other job losses at large tech firms, as companies struggle to re-adapt to the post-Covid working environment. Google, Microsoft and Amazon have all made lay-offs in the past few months.

Musk has taken a number of steps to try and right Twitter’s finances, following reports that the company was losing $4 million a day when he completed his purchase. Musk is reported to have made his first interest payment last month on the bank loan used to finance his takeover.

Around $13 billion of the $44 billion total was covered by banks, and Twitter is reported to have paid off $300 million of that figure. There have been controversies over the way Twitter has tried to turn its balance sheet around, including via closing its UK offices and reportedly not paying rent for the properties - leading to a lawsuit being filed against the company by Crown Estates in the UK.

More pertinently, some employees previously laid off by Twitter are taking action against the company over their lay-offs. It is not yet known if further action will be taken by the most recent employees to have been laid off.