Twitter Layoffs: no golden parachute for Parag?

SAN FRANCISCO — Elon Musk planned to begin laying off workers at Twitter as soon as Saturday, four people with knowledge of the matter said, with some managers being asked to draw up lists of employees to cut. Mr. Musk, who completed a $44 billion deal to buy Twitter on Thursday, has ordered the cuts across the company, with some teams to be trimmed more than others, said three of the people, who declined to be identified for fear of retaliation. The scale of the layoffs could not be determined. Twitter has around 7,500 employees. ... The layoffs at Twitter would take place before a Nov. 1 date when employees were scheduled to receive stock grants as part of their compensation. Such grants typically represent a significant portion of employees’ pay. By laying off workers before that date, Mr. Musk may avoid paying the grants, though he is supposed to pay the employees cash in place of their stock under the terms of the merger agreement. Twitter and a representative of Mr. Musk did not respond to requests for comment. Ross Gerber, the chief executive of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management, said he was told by Jared Birchall, the head of Mr. Musk’s family office, that layoffs were coming at Twitter. “I was told to expect somewhere around 50 percent of people will be laid off,” he said. ... Mr. Musk also appears unlikely to pay the golden parachutes that the fired top executives of Twitter were set to receive. Under the merger agreement, those executives — including Parag Agrawal, the chief executive — had been set to receive compensation of $20 million to $60 million if they were fired. But Mr. Musk terminated the executives “for cause,” meaning he did it because he alleged he had justification, which may void that agreement, two people with knowledge of the matter said. Those executives, who also include the former chief financial officer Ned Segal, the former general counsel Sean Edgett, and the former top policy and legal executive Vijaya Gadde, are deliberating their next steps, one person said. Mr. Musk may also be testing Twitter’s engineers. He and his team have assigned some of them projects to complete, three people with knowledge of the matter said. One project involved changes to Twitter’s login screen, they said. Some engineers worked late into the night on Friday to complete the assignments, they said. Credit to Kate Conger, Ryan Mac, Sheera Frenkel and Mike Isaac (New York Times 10/30/2022) Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/29/technology/twitter-layoffs-musk-jobs.html Paywalled but select excerpts of interest to Blind community included in this post because it impacts actual livelihoods and certain paragraphs were not copied where you see the elipses (...) I am a NYT subscriber and simply sharing this with friends and family. #h1b #layoffs #tech #twitter #elon

Elon Musk Is Said to Have Ordered Job Cuts Across Twitter

NYTimes