Twitter reportedly asking some fired employees to return to work

Fox Business ^ | November 6, 2022 | Paul Best

[Coronal]

Elon Musk wasted no time in reshaping Twitter's workforce, cutting about half of the company's 7,500 employees on Friday, but now the social media platform is reportedly trying to bring some of those workers back.

Dozens of workers are being asked to return, some of whom were laid off by mistake and others who have experience building features that the new Twitter owner wants.

Musk tweeted on Friday that Twitter's layoffs were necessary because the company was losing more than $4 million per day.

The Tesla CEO hinted at big changes in the lead-up to closing the deal, tweeting in May that the company "will be super focused on hardcore software engineering, design, infosec & server hardware." He tweeted in May that the "most messed up" thing at Twitter right now is that "there seem to be 10 people ‘managing’ for every one person coding."

[SaveFerris]

When they started that nonsense around me I promised to turn 10 lines of code into 300 lines.

It’s a piece of cake 🍰.

LOL

[Robert357]

In Machiavelli's The Prince, he advised that when one conquers a town, the Prince cannot know who the real opponents were and who were either neutral or favored the overthrow of the old monarchs. So his advice was to go in and kill a large number of likely figures. Those who were part of the old power structure would assume that their evil was not discovered and they are safe. Those that were killed and innocent will be missed but no outcry will occur for them as long as the new ruler brings peace, prosperity, and stability.

Elon has, as the new Prince of Twitter, performed the mass killing of the evil old ruling class. Perhaps a little too much, but given the letter by employees lecturing him and the efforts of the Twitter HR department to enroll him in a management course, I can understand the overreaction.

The half the employees who are left will “tow the line” now that the new Prince is in charge. I am sure that some of those hired back will be either grateful to get their jobs back or refuse to come back. Either way, they will know that they are being watched and had better perform or they can be fired again.

[JimRed]

Maybe a planned firing and return invitation to put the fear of unemployment in them, so they’ll behave themselves.

[CharlesWayneCT]

The problem with this story is that it is clearly not entirely accurate.

No Twitter employees have been laid off. The layoffs were ANNOUNCED, but there is a 60-90 day period required before they happen.

So, the employees that are slated to be laid off were told. They are still employees. They are still being paid. They were locked out of work, for security reasons.

Now, Twitter is telling some of those employees to report back to work. If they don’t, I presume they will be assumed to have quit, and will no longer be paid or offered severance.

So, it could be a ploy to keep from having to pay out, or it could be that these employees are trusted or can be monitored, and have skills that are desired over the next few months.

For all I know, they might still be getting laid off in 3 months. With WARN act notices, employees are supposed to keep working and expected not to mess up anything, and if they quit or sabatoge, they can be fired and lose severance and pay.