In emails and instructions, employees were also told to not come to the office and return home as the layoffs had started taking place. The employees had been intimated in a previous email that "in an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday". The email said that each person would be receiving an individual email.
The employment termination emails were then sent out to the staff. Soon, workers started sharing reactions on social media. Many employees said that they had lost access to their company's systems.
Reactions flew in thick and fast as many took to Twitter itself to share memes and reactions. Check out a few of them below:
There were also some who stood in solidarity with the staff and others who called it the regular hiring and firing that happens at a company.
Even as employees in India received notices, a post from 25-year-old Yash Agarwal went viral. He shared a photo of himself after he had received his termination email and tweeted, "Just got laid off. Bird App, it was an absolute honour, the greatest privilege ever to be a part of this team, this culture."
Musk, in one of his first moves after the takeover, had fired Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and many top managers. The Tesla CEO also brought in his own people from his automotive company to oversee Twitter layoffs and hired other people to temporarily oversee proceedings at the company. Among those brought in is Sriram Krishnan, an Indian-origin technology executive, who is apparently helping Musk out in his efforts to revamp the social media giant following the acquisition.