Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer of Twitter, has defended the ongoing mass layoffs at the microblogging firm.
Daily Trust had reported how nearly half of Twitter’s workforce were laid off. Many of those affected received job termination notifications on Friday.
Some of the affected staff took to Twitter to vent their frustration exiting their job at one of Silicon Valley’s most iconic companies.
But breaking silence on the issue which has been trending, Musk said Twitter has been losing $4 million per day because of its large workforce.
According to him, this left the company with no choice but to let some people go.
Musk noted that everyone affected by the layoffs was given three months of severance packages, which is 50% higher than legally required.
He said, “Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately, there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required.”
Musk has been pushing to find ways to pay for the mammoth $44 billion deal for which he took billions of dollars in debt and sold $15.5 billion worth of shares in Tesla, his electric car company.
Company sources said that Musk’s teams were imposing a furious pace on the remaining employees, bringing in Tesla developers to oversee the work of Twitter workers.
Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX chief, is said to owe $1 billion in annual interest alone to pay for a deal he tried to wiggle out from almost as soon as he made it in April.
