Reports of layoffs at Twitter have swirled since Musk agreed to buy the company in April.
Elon Musk planned to begin laying off workers at Twitter as soon as Saturday, four people with knowledge of the matter said, with some managers being asked to draw up lists of employees to cut.
Such grants typically represent a significant portion of employees’ pay. By laying off workers before that date, Nov. 1, Musk may avoid paying the grants, although he is supposed to pay the employees cash in place of their stock under the terms of the merger agreement.Ross Gerber, the CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management, said he was told by Jared Birchall, the head of Musk’s family office, that layoffs were coming at Twitter.
But Musk is taking time to evaluate other areas of Twitter, such as deciding what posts to keep up and take down on the site. Although he initially said he wanted Twitter to be a freewheeling place for all kinds of commentary and would bring back banned users, including former President Donald Trump, Musk on Friday made it clear that such changes would not happen immediately.
Musk may also be testing Twitter’s engineers. He and his team have assigned some of them projects to complete, three people with knowledge of the matter said. One project involved changes to Twitter’s login screen, they said. Some engineers worked late into the night Friday to complete the assignments, they said.