San Francisco: Tweet Chief Elon Musk on Monday denied reports that he planned to lay off Twitter employees before Nov. 1 to stop them from receiving stock grants as part of their year-end compensation.
In response to a tweet from Eric Umansky, ProPublica’s deputy managing editor, that said Musk was “making sure to fire people at Twitter before some of their year-end compensation starts on Tuesday,” Musk said: “This is false’.
However, he gave no further explanation.
The New York Times first reported that Musk plans to lay off employees before Tuesday (Nov. 1).
According to the report, Twitter’s new boss may not have to pay those subsidies if he lays off employees before Nov. 1.
Tesla’s CEO is expected to reorganize Twitter and cut staff significantly.
Previous reports said Musk would lay off 75 percent (5,600 employees) of Twitter’s workforce.
Twitter has about 7,500 employees.
Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter last week and fired top executives, including former CEO Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal and policy chief Vijaya Gade, among others.
He casually mentioned Twitter’s layoffs in his tweets without mentioning any figure.
Twitter employees are still reeling from expected layoffs as part of the takeover.
They had written an open letter to the board of directors and Musk criticizing his plans to cut 75 percent of the workforce.