More Twitter Staffers Axed Over Weekend; Elon Musk Tweets, “Hope You Have A Good Sunday. First Day Of The Rest Of Your Life”

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Jill Goldsmith

Twitter has fired at least 200 more employees, or 10% of its already dramatically scaled-down workforce, according to press reports, as owner-CEO Elon Musk continues to slash costs to make his $44 billion acquisition viable.

The purchase of Twitter last year remains one of oddest business stories in recent times, and the fallout is too. His sudden, high-priced bid was a surprise, then he almost immediately reneged on the deal and was sued. He capitulated when his chances of a court victory seemed dim. Since then, he’s alienated and subsequently tried to woo back worried advertisers and tried several launches of troubled Twitter Blue in the hope of generating additional revenue and fired thousands of employees from a staff that stood at 7,500 before he bought it. Musk had threatened to eliminate two-thirds of all Twitter jobs, now he’s gone beyond that.

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The cuts are said to traverse advertising, app support, product managers, data scientists and engineers working on the functioning and reliability of the site.

Product manager Esther Crawford, a Musk loyalist and head of the controversial Twitter Blue verification subscription project, was said to be among those fired. A photo of her from November sleeping on the floor of Twitter’s offices epitomized the new regime.

Reports said that many employees learned of their status when they were unable to log in to their company account.

In November, after having axed nearly two-thirds of staff bringing it about 2,700, he said at a meeting with employees that layoffs were over and that the company would begin actively recruiting for certain divisions. Around 1,000 people were said to have resigned after he closed the acquisitions in October and took the company private.

In December, he conducted an online poll asking if he should step down as CEO, and when the response was a resounding yes, Musk promised that he would. He given no indication of just when that would happen or if he’s looking at candidates.

Musk said during a conference in Dubai that he thinks Twitter “should be in a stable position around the end of this year.” After, he tweeted a photo of his dog Floki sitting at a desk with the caption, “The new CEO of Twitter is amazing.”

He said in Dubai, “I need to stabilize the organization and just make sure it’s in a financially healthy place in that the product roadmap is clearly laid out.”

On Sunday, the billionaire Tesla and SpaceX founder tweeted:

Musk also dove into the controversy over Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams, whose strip was dropped from by a host of publishers recently after racist remarks. Adams said on his Coffee with Scott Adams online video program that white people should “get the hell away from Black people,” labeling Blacks as a “hate group.”

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