On his first day in charge at Twitter, Elon Musk has started to lay the groundwork for massive job cuts at the social media platform. His $44 billion take-over of the social media business was completed last week, after which it became immediately apparent that he will make some massive changes. Musk has already laid off three quarters of the Twitter board, signalling his mistrust in how the business had been run until now.
Read: The latest Redmi can charge fully in nine minutes
Shareholders of the previously publically owned Twitter will be paid $54.20 per share, and the company will become privately owned and run again by Musk himself. This comes after months of speculation, back-and-forth and drama.
After the South-African born billionaire made his initial offer for the business, the due diligence process didn’t go as expected. Musk accused the Twitter leadership of misleading practices and said they lied about the actual numbers of active users compared to bots, and Twitter leadership said Musk was misleading in his motives for buying the business and the agreed upon price.
On October 4th, Musk agreed to proceed on his originally proposed terms, and a Delaware Chancery Court judge gave the two sides until October 28th to wrap up the deal. That deadline was met, and now Musk, who is CEO of both Tesla Inc. and SpaceX, also controls Twitter, a service he uses often but criticizes openly, and that he has promised to change dramatically.
Now, the company’s shares do not trade on the New York Stock exchange anymore. Musk’s ideals will now immediately be imprinted on the company’s day-to-day. He has said he wants to ensure “free speech” on the social network, which is likely to mean looser content moderation standards.
Musk stated months ago that Twitter needs to “get healthy”, meaning that it hasn’t been operating in an operationally viable fashion. He has also said only “exceptional” employees will be able to work from home and everyone else must come to the office. San Francisco-based Twitter was one of the first large companies to promise all employees they could work from anywhere “forever.”
Now, Musk is wholly expected to retrench swathes of Twitter employees as he imposes his own business ideals, not happy with the profitability levels. It is expected that Musk will lay off around 50 percent of the staff, completely changing the landscape.
