Since Elon Musk took the reins at Twitter as its CEO in October 2022, its workforce has dropped by 80% and reportedly hovers at around 1,300 employees, according to CNBC.
Among the remaining staffers, less than 550 are full-time engineers, the network found following a review of the website’s internal records. The trust and safety team, which monitors content, recommends policies and makes changes to the website’s design, is down to fewer than 20 employees.
Records showed that Twitter still pays 1,400 non-working employees, the network reported. Several of these employees left the company after refusing Musk’s ultimatum for an “extremely hardcore” work culture which he nicknamed “Twitter 2.0.” Around 75 employees, including 40 engineers, are on leave.
One engineer who asked CNBC to keep their identity anonymous said Twitter’s code base is massive and requires knowledge pertaining to different programming languages to maintain different parts of the website. Since these skills are not easily transferable across the website, “it will be hard to train engineers after losing so much institutional knowledge,” the engineer told CNBC.
Musk himself challenged CNBC’s reporting that Twitter’s staff dropped from 7,500 to 1,300 in less than three months.
“The note is incorrect,” he tweeted. “There are ~2300 active, working employees at Twitter. There are still hundreds of employees working on trust & safety, along with several thousand contractors. Less than 10 people from my other companies are working at Twitter.”
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Musk has defended the cuts he’s made to Twitter as a tool to fight its $12.5 billion debt problem, the AP reported in December. Along with reversing policy on political ads, Musk plans to introduce an ad-free subscription for Twitter’s users, TechCrunch reported.
“Ads are too frequent on Twitter and too big,” he tweeted. “Taking steps to address both in coming weeks.”
Other cuts have included laying off striking janitors before Christmas. The janitors, who picketed the platform’s San Francisco headquarters, demanded a new contract after alleging unfair labor practices by the tech company. Without a clean-up crew, Twitter employees were reportedly bringing their own toilet paper to work.