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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Musk fires more Twitter sales workers after ‘hardcore’ purge

Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and chief executive officer of Tesla, speaks during a discussion at the Satellite 2020 Conference in Washington on March 9, 2020.  (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg )
By Kurt Wagner,Kamaron Leach and Maxwell Adler Bloomberg Bloomberg

Elon Musk laid off more Twitter workers from the sales side of the social network’s business beginning late on Sunday, further trimming a staff that had already been decimated by cuts and resignations.

Last week, Musk asked workers to commit to his more “hardcore” version of the company or leave.

Sales employees signed on to his vision in greater numbers than workers on the technical side, where there were mass resignations, according to people familiar with the matter.

Musk is using the cuts to balance out the remaining staff, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal decisions.

Some of those who were fired started to receive notice on Sunday, according to two people familiar with the matter, though it’s unclear how many will be impacted in the current round. Platformer earlier reported the news.

Twitter’s sales organization held an all-hands meeting on Sunday with Musk and the new head of sales, Chris Riedy, two people said.

Many employees showed up expecting some announcement about cuts, after Bloomberg reported Saturday that more were coming.

Instead, Musk used the time to talk about ongoing updates, including his decision to reinstate the account of former U.S. President Donald Trump, one of the people said. Then the layoffs came with no corporate memo, they added.

An internal counter of employees currently reads 2,750, one person said, though some resignations and cuts may still be in the process of being counted.

Twitter had more than 7,000 employees before Musk took over in late October.