Elon Musk has now purged about half of Twitter’s 7,500 employee base, completely or nearly completely stripping entire teams, including those who have to defend themselves against misinformation ahead of the US midterm elections next week. The edge has learned.

The areas of Twitter most impacted by Musk’s cuts include product trust and security, policy, communications, tweet curation, ethical AI, data science, research, machine learning, social wellbeing, accessibility, and even certain core engineering teams. , according to tweets. by dismissed employees and acquaintances. More company executives, including Arnaud Weber, VP of consumer product technology, and Tony Haile, a senior product director who oversees Twitter’s work with news publishers, have also been fired after Musk’s resignation from Twitter’s senior leadership last week.

Given the sweeping nature of Musk’s layoffs and his mandate to cut costs in areas such as cloud hosting, employees who stay with Twitter told The edge that they expect the company to struggle to maintain critical infrastructure in the near term. “Shit is going to break,” said one current employee who asked for anonymity to speak without permission from the company, while another called the management layoff process “an absolute shit show.”

Musk’s cuts began Thursday night, shortly after an unsigned memo was sent internally confirming that the company would “go through the arduous process of reducing our global workforce.” Affected employees soon realized they could no longer access their work accounts long before they were notified of their job status by another unsigned email titled “Your Role at Twitter.”

According to emails sent to laid-off employees and an internal FAQ obtained by: The edge, those affected will be paid and will continue to receive benefits until dates that appear to fit the length of mass redundancy notice required by U.S. federal and state law. If they sign a “Release of All Claims” document and a separation agreement, all U.S. employees will receive one month’s base salary as severance pay taxed at the higher supplemental income rate.

Meanwhile, employees in other countries have been advised that their roles “have been identified as potentially affected or at risk of being fired” and that they must continue to abide by company policies until more information is shared. The Employee FAQ says that “about 50% of the workforce will be affected” by the layoffs, confirming a discussion accidentally exposed in Twitter’s Slack two days ago.

Employees who were not fired on Friday received a separate email to their work address stating that access to the company’s internal directory, Birdhouse and office badge would be closed until Monday, Nov. 7. Before Birdhouse was taken out, Musk had listed nearly 90 direct reports, according to screenshots seen by The edge.

“Over the past week, Elon has spent time with a number of employees, customers, partners, policy makers and Twitter users,” reads the unsigned email to the remaining employees, according to a copy that you can read in full at the bottom of this story. “He looks forward to communicating with everyone about his vision for the company soon.”

According to Musk’s merger agreement with Twitter and an internal employee FAQ from October seen by The edge, he agreed to pay laid-off workers with severance pay that would at least match what Twitter offered prior to the deal closing. The FAQ says Twitter’s severance pay before the Musk acquisition was two months’ base salary, or “on target earnings,” for sales associates with incentive plans, along with an employee’s performance bonus who “at target,” a cash contribution to health care, and the cash value of equity that “would have vested within three months of the divorce date.”

Some Twitter employees have already filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging that the company has violated California’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) and the WARN Act, which require companies to be notified at least 60 days in advance. before they are massively laid off. Others told The edge they are consulting with their attorneys about the discrepancy between Musk’s month-long layoff and what he had agreed to pay before the merger.

Twitter had no comment on this story at press time. The company’s communications department has virtually disappeared from Friday.

Here’s the full email from Twitter employees who survived the layoffs received Friday:

Hello –

Thank you for your patience during this transition and for your commitment to the important work you do at Twitter. We are sending you this email to confirm that your employment will not be affected by the current staff reduction.

Over the past week, Elon has spent time with a number of employees, customers, partners, policy makers and Twitter users. He looks forward to communicating with everyone about his vision for the company soon.

We know you probably have some questions and we’ll have more information to share next week. In the meantime, please note that Birdhouse will be temporarily offline until Monday, our office buildings will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be temporarily suspended. The offices will reopen on Monday 7 November.

Thank you for continuing to show respect for affected colleagues as we navigate these changes. As a reminder, we expect you to continue to comply with Company policy by not discussing confidential Company information on social media, with the press or elsewhere.

We look forward to working with you on the exciting future of Twitter.

Twitter