It’s judgment day at Twitter as Elon Musk fires half of Twitter’s 7,500 workforce; workers told to go home and not come back

It’s finally Friday, the day Twitter employees learn their fate about whether they get to keep their job or not. Yesterday, Twitter notified all the company’s 7,500 employees in a Thursday email that the layoffs had begun.

According to a report from the New York Times, Twitter employees were instructed to go home and not come back on Friday as the cuts proceeded.

“In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global work force,” read the email. “We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is, unfortunately, necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.”

The announcement comes just a few days after Musk completed the $44 billion acquisition of the social giant. Last week,  Musk began his Twitter ownership with the firings of four top Twitter executives. The first to be fired was former CEO Parag Agrawal. Musk also fired Ned Segal, the chief financial officer, Sean Edgett, the general counsel, and Vijaya Gadde, the top legal and policy executive, (or censorship czar).

According to previous internal messages and an investor, about half of Twitter’s employees were just laid off – however, the final number is still unknown. As we reported last week, there were other reports that Musk planned to lay off nearly 75 percent. Musk told investors in his $44 billion takeover deal to buy the social giant “that he planned to get rid of nearly 75 percent of Twitter’s 7,500 workers, whittling the company down to a skeleton staff of just over 2,000.”

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Twitter employees circulated a message on Slack that suggested 3,738 people could be fired, adding that changes could still be made to the list.

On October 26, Elon Musk posted a video of himself entering Twitter HQ with a bathroom sink and a message: “Let that sink in!” It now appears that it’s beginning to “sink in” for all Twitter employees and not just the four recently fired executives.

Update: 8:25 AM EST: Twitter temporarily closed its offices on Friday after the company told employees in an email that it would tell them by 9 A.M. Pacific time on Friday (12 P.M. EDT/1600 GMT) about staff cuts. “In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” the social giant said in the email sent out yesterday.