Twitter Lays Off 30% Of Recruiting Team As Acquisition Looms

Twitter laid off nearly a third of its recruiting team amid its acquisition by Elon Musk, according to reports.

The social media company laid off 30% of its talent acquisition team on Thursday, two months into a hiring freeze. It’s one of more than 140 tech companies based in the United States that have initiated layoffs amid a market downturn.

U.S.-based tech companies have laid off more than 24,000 employees so far this year, . Affected employees include those of publicly traded companies such as Netflix and PayPal, high-flying unicorns like Klarna and Bolt, and early-stage companies. Other large companies, including Microsoft and Uber, have also paused or slowed down hiring.

Twitter’s layoffs are notable because they also come amid Musk’s acquisition of the company.

Musk agreed to buy Twitter for $44 billion, or $54.20 per share. He said his motivation for acquiring the publicly traded social media company is to improve free speech online.

“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said in an April statement.

The deal hasn’t closed yet, in part because of Musk’s own questions about how many bots and spam accounts are on the platform. Given how much back and forth there’s been between the company and Musk regarding verifying Twitter’s user numbers, the timeline of when the deal could close is unclear.

Twitter had a market cap of nearly $30 billion on Friday morning.

Related Reading

• Elon Musk Says Twitter Deal Can’t Proceed Until Company Verifies Bot Numbers
• Elon Musk Will Buy Twitter For $44B
• Tech Layoffs In 2022: The U.S. Companies That Have Cut Jobs

Illustration: Dom Guzman

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