Why Did Musk, Who Fired 3,700 Twitter Employees Overnight, Suddenly Ask Them to "Come Back"?

Mass Layoffs to Cut Twitter Acquisition Costs
Essential Staff Identified Late... Requests for Return Sent to Dozens

Elon Musk, who acquired Twitter. Photo by Reuters

[Asia Economy Reporter Yoon Seul-gi] Two days after Elon Musk, who became the largest shareholder of Twitter, laid off 3,700 employees at once, it has been revealed that some of the laid-off employees were asked to return. Those who were asked to return after being laid off were later identified as essential personnel.

According to Bloomberg and other sources on the 6th (local time), Twitter laid off about half of its entire workforce, approximately 3,700 employees, but later requested dozens of employees identified as essential personnel to return. These employees were necessary to build the new features Musk envisioned for Twitter, but the layoffs were carried out before this was fully understood. The media pointed out that this clearly shows how rushed and chaotic the layoffs were.

Earlier, Musk laid off 3,700 employees, half of the staff, eight days after becoming Twitter’s largest shareholder to reduce costs related to the acquisition. The layoffs included the existing management team such as CEO Parag Agrawal and the entire board of directors. On the 4th, about 3,700 employees, half of the approximately 7,000 staff, were laid off. At the time of the layoffs, many employees learned about it when access to internal email and corporate messenger Slack was suddenly cut off.

According to the US IT specialized media 'The Verge' on the 5th, the employees mainly targeted for layoffs were from departments such as Twitter policy, product safety, communications, and accessibility, and in some organizations, the entire staff was laid off. At Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, about 900 of the 2,500 employees were included in the layoffs.

Meanwhile, Musk stated on his Twitter on the 5th that the company was losing $4 million (about 5.6 billion KRW) daily, making layoffs inevitable. However, some of the laid-off employees have filed lawsuits claiming the layoff process was unjust.

On the 3rd, five Twitter employees filed a class-action lawsuit in the San Francisco federal court, arguing that failing to provide sufficient notice before mass layoffs violated US federal and California state laws. According to the federal and California 'Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act,' employers must provide at least 60 days' prior notice to affected parties when laying off 50 or more employees at once or closing a plant.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.