Report: Twitter is Asking “Dozens” of Fired Employees to Come Back

In Elon Musk’s urgent quest to make his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter profitable, the company laid off nearly half of its workforce last week, a brutal move that led employees to file a class-action lawsuit. As it turns out, the new management went a bit too far as according to Bloomberg, the company is already asking some employees to come back.

“Some of those who are being asked to return were laid off by mistake, according to two people familiar with the moves. Others were let go before management realized that their work and experience may be necessary to build the new features Musk envisions, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private information.”

According to Bloomberg’s sources, Twitter now has around 3,700 employees left who are now under high pressure to deliver new features at a much faster pace than before. One of the first Twitter big changes under Musk’s leadership is to make the platform’s verification feature a paid Twitter Blue feature.

This change started rolling out last week alongside the new $8/month pricing for Twitter Blue, but The New York Times has reported that Twitter has since decided to delay the rollout after the end of the US midterm elections. To prevent Twitter users from abusing the feature, Musk also stated tweeted that “any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying “parody” will be permanently suspended.”

Previously, we issued a warning before suspension, but now that we are rolling out widespread verification, there will be no warning.

This will be clearly identified as a condition for signing up to Twitter Blue.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2022

Last week, Elon Musk complained about a “massive” drop in revenue for Twitter due to “activist groups pressuring advertisers.” There’s definitely a lot of uncertainty right now regarding the future of Twitter, but Musk also said that Twitter’s user base is actually growing.

“Twitter user numbers have increased significantly around the world since the deal was announced. And these are very early days. As Twitter becomes by far the most reliable source of truth, it will be indispensable,” Musk tweeted yesterday.