Elon Musk Plans to Cut Half of Twitter Jobs to Slash Costs: Report

Elon Musk plans to eliminate about 3,700 jobs at Twitter Inc., or half of the social media company's workforce, in a bid to drive down costs following his $44 billion acquisition, according to people...

Elon Musk plans to cut about 3,700 jobs at Twitter Inc. , or half of the social media company's workforce, in an effort to cut costs after its $44 billion acquisition, according to people familiar with the matter.

The new owner of Twitter aims to inform affected employees on Friday, the people, who asked not to be identified, and who discussed the lack of

general plans. Musk also plans to reverse the company's current policy of working from anywhere, and is asking remaining employees to report to offices -- although some exceptions could be made, the people said.

Musk and a team of advisors are considering a range of scenarios for job cuts and other policy changes at San Francisco-based Twitter, the people said, adding that terms of staff cuts may change. Two of the people said that in one of the scenarios under study, laid-off workers would be offered severance pay for 60 days.

A Twitter spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Musk is under pressure to find ways to cut the costs of the business he overpaid. The billionaire agreed to pay $54.20 per share in April, as markets slumped. Then he tried for months to get out of the deal,

Alleging that the company misled him about the spread of fake accounts.

Twitter sued to force Musk to honor his agreement, and in recent weeks Musk has relented, surrendering to seal the deal on mutually agreed terms. The Take-Private deal closed on Thursday.

Twitter employees have been preparing for layoffs since Musk took office and immediately ousted many of the top executive team, including CEO Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal, and chief legal officers Vijaya Jade and Sean Edget. In the days that followed,

Key marketing departures include Leslie Berland, chief customer officer Sarah Personnet, and Jean-Philippe Miho, who was vice president of global customer solutions.

Musk erased himself as "Twit Chief" in his bio on the social network. Bloomberg previously reported that he will take over as interim CEO himself.

He also dissolved the company's board of directors and became the sole director, later saying that it was "only temporary."

People familiar with the matter said that over the weekend, a handful of employees with manager and vice president positions were laid off. Other leaders were asked to make lists of employees on their teams who could be deleted, the people said.

Senior employees on product teams have been asked to target a 50% reduction in headcount, a person said earlier this week. The person said that the engineers and director-level employees from Tesla Inc. , the automaker Musk also runs, see listings.

The layoffs were drawn up and ranked based on individuals' contributions to the Twitter code during their time at the company, the people said. The evaluation was conducted by both Tesla employees and Twitter administrators.

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