Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) is reportedly gearing for another round of layoffs as per media reports. This time, the engineering department will take the maximum hit says The Verge. However, the exact number of cuts has not been officially revealed.
Posts have been reportedly seen on Blind, the anonymous workplace forum, indicating that job cuts will be announced soon.
In August 2024, Musk had asked his employees to write about their contributions to the social-media platform in one page to become eligible for stock options. From this one-page summary, Musk wanted to gauge how much impact each employee has had on the company and whether they deserve stock options. At a time when X employees were already facing unexplained delays in promotions and the fear of layoff was looming large, Musk’s demand for details of their contribution to the company had made the employees even more anxious about their future. At the time of this demand, the equity refresher that the X staff were supposed to receive had yet not been granted to them. Musk had reportedly promised that the staff would be allowed to cash out stock regularly, but hand’t kept his word.
The last stock refresh in October 2023 valued X at $19 billion. This was way lower than the $44 billion deal that Elon Musk had struck to buy the social-media company. The deal and acquisition had grabbed headlines in 2022 because post takeover Musk had terminated almost 50 per cent of the workforce.
