Twitter to make 140 of its Irish staff redundant as part of global job cuts

Twitter has confirmed 140 redundancies for its Irish operation in Dublin.

The lay-offs amount to about one third of the social media platform’s workforce in Dublin.

Two weeks ago Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, announced that half of the platform’s 7,000 employees would be made redundant immediately. They were asked to check their emails to find out if they were being retained or not.

Under Irish employment law, the minister with responsibility at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment has to be informed of collective redundancies where more than 30 employees are being let go in a company that employs more than 300 people.

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The Minister responsible, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar, was informed of Twitter’s intentions on Friday. There will now be a 30-day consultation period.

Mr Varadkar told reporters before the Fine Gael ardfheis in Athlone: “They can be assured that they will receive a lot of Government help. Whether it’s job search to find a new job, whether they want to set up their own business, we can help with that too.”

Mr Musk has presided over chaos since acquiring Twitter on October 28th in a deal worth $44 billion (€42.6 billion).

On Wednesday he sent a company-wide email to all staff asking them to commit to “long hours at high intensity” in order to create Twitter 2.0 or else leave. Many have taken the latter option, leaving the company in even greater peril, while others failed to respond.

Mr Musk also told Twitter software engineers on Friday to fly into its San Francisco offices in person from wherever they were in the world.

Many employees shared emojis of a person saluting, or a blue heart, in a sign of camaraderie, a source said. Some users of Twitter, meanwhile, expressed concerns that the latest exits could wreak havoc on the site.

Some employees who had indicated they were resigning still had access to email and Slack on Friday morning, two people said, with one asking whether Twitter had enough people to lock down the systems.

On Thursday, Mr Musk had emailed staff saying that they could work remotely on the condition that they were high performers and had their managers’ blessing. Only last week he mandated that all Twitter employees had to be in the office for a minimum of 40 hours per week.

It “feels like they’re trying to convince [some] people to stay”, one employee said on Thursday.

Others, however, have been fired publicly in recent days for challenging the billionaire entrepreneur or expressing concerns through internal messages on Slack or on the platform itself, said three former employees.

The cuts and rapid changes have raised fears of a proliferation of misinformation and hate speech on the platform. Mr Musk has paused sign-ups to its flagship premium subscription service Twitter Blue after its “blue tick” feature was abused by impersonators, targeting politicians and brands such as Eli Lilly and Lockheed Martin.

– Additional reporting copyright the Financial Times Limited 2022