MANILA, Philippines – Bloomberg on Thursday, November 3, reported that new Twitter CEO Elon Musk is planning to eliminate about 3,700 jobs at Twitter, which is about 50% of the company’s workforce. 

The move is meant to drive down costs for the company, with Bloomberg citing anonymous sources with knowledge of the matter. 

Those who will be laid off will be informed on Friday, and the company’s work-from-anywhere policy will also be reversed, with some exceptions. 

Some leaders and personnel heads in the company have been asked to provide a list of who to lay off, with the target headcount reduction rate of 50%. Individuals in the list were ranked with consideration to each individual’s contribution to Twitter’s code, with assessment done by personnel from both Twitter and Tesla, which Musk also owns. 

Musk paid $44 billion for Twitter, a purchase he himself said he was “obviously overpaying” for. The purchase is expected to cost Musk and investors an annual interest debt of $1 billion.

Already, Musk has announced plans to charge $8 monthly for verification on the platform, and a way for content creators to charge a fee for their videos. On the other hand, advertisers have become cautious with Musk at the helm, with some pausing ad activities. They are concerned as to how the billionaire, who has called himself a free speech absolutist, would handle disinformation on the platform. 

In his early days as Twitter owner, Musk made a tweet that spread a conspiracy theory about the attack against US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul. 

Top executives have already been fired including former CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and policy chief Vijaya Gadde. Following them were departures from chief marketing officer Leslie Berland, chief customer officer Sarah Personette, and vice president of global client solutions, Jean-Philippe Maheu.– Rappler.com