Elon Musk emailed his remaining employees on Twitter Monday morning to tell them that, after another round of sudden layoffs over the weekend, those remaining will receive “highly significant” performance-based stock awards on March 24, according to an internal memo obtained by The edge.
“Over the past week, we completed a difficult organizational overhaul aimed at improving future execution, using as much feedback as possible from across the company,” Musk wrote, confirming he continued to fire employees after telling them that he would retire in November. 21st. “Those who stay are highly regarded by those around them.”
The short memo, titled “Performance Awards,” is Musk’s first communication to Twitter employees since he fired hundreds of them without warning over the weekend, including several senior leaders and nearly the entire product team. (Platform players Zoe Schiffer tweeted first on Monday’s memo.) Employees are in the dark about exactly how Musk will compensate them for the stock awards they lost after taking Twitter private. In previous emails to them, he’s alluded to the system he’s set up at SpaceX to get employees to sell private stocks on a regular basis.
Musk has made it difficult for even those who remain to know the full scope of his cuts. The company’s internal directory remains offline, and Musk last week shut down the ability for employees to use the company’s Slack. He then also disabled Google Chat for business emails, which is still disabled at the time of writing. Current and former employees I’ve spoken to estimate that Twitter’s total workforce is now well under 2,000, compared to the roughly 7,500 employees there when Musk took over.
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