Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey apologized for the company's expansion too fast. The day before, Twitter's new boss, Elon Musk, announced a massive company-wide layoff, with nearly 1,000 employees fired on the same day.
As of June 30, 2013, shortly before Twitter went public, the company had about 2,000 employees, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). By the end of last year, the company had more than 7,500 full-time employees.
On October 28, after Musk completed the acquisition and took over Twitter, there were rumors of massive layoffs at the company. On Thursday night, Twitter notified employees that layoffs would begin. In a notification letter to the agency, Twitter confirmed that a total of 983 California employees had been fired.
Musk tweeted Friday afternoon: "Regarding the Twitter layoffs, unfortunately, when the company is losing more than $4M a day, we have no choice. Everyone who leaves gets a 3-month severance payout, which is 50% higher than required by law."
Dorsey's apology comes at a pivotal point in Twitter's transformation, with Musk's takeover sparking a lot of upheavals, such as the firing of executive leadership, including the CEO. Advertisers and users wary of Musk's plans are fleeing the platform, prompting the latter to face new pressure to increase revenue.
In response, Musk took a number of steps, including making users pay to verify accounts. Musk also expressed a vision to support "free speech" on the platform, which has civil rights groups and information experts worried that more hate speech, misinformation, and conspiracy theories will spread on the platform.
Dorsey co-founded Twitter in 2006 with Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams. Throughout the leadership change, Dorsey served as CEO twice before leaving last year. Dorsey was replaced by then-CTO Parag Agrawal, who has since been fired by Musk.