After a week of uncertainty about the company's future under Elon Musk, Twitter Inc will tell employees by email on Friday whether they have been laid off, temporarily closing its offices and preventing staff access.
The company said in an email to staff that it would alert employees by 9 am Pacific time on Friday 1600 GMT about staff cuts.
In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday, according to an email sent on Thursday by Reuters.
According to internal plans reviewed by Reuters, Musk is looking to reduce around 3,700 Twitter employees, or about half of the workforce, as he seeks to slash costs and enforce a demanding new work ethic.
Twitter didn't respond immediately to a request for comment.
In the email, Twitter said that all badge access would be suspended and all employees' offices temporarily closed in order to ensure the safety of the company's employees, as well as Twitter's systems and customer data. The employees who were not affected by the layoffs would be notified via their work email addresses. The memo said that staff who had been laid off would be notified with next steps to their personal email addresses.
Some employees had suggested their access to the company's IT system had been blocked, and they were feared that they had been laid off.
A user with the SBkcrn account, who is described as a former senior community manager on Twitter, has been remotely logged out of my work laptop and removed from Slack.
A class action lawsuit was filed against Twitter by its employees, who claimed the company was conducting mass layoffs without providing the required 60 day advance notice, in violation of federal and California law.
The suit asked the San Francisco federal court to issue an order to stop Twitter from soliciting employees who are laid off to sign documents without informing them of the pendency of the case.
Two sources familiar with the matter and an internal Slack message reviewed by Reuters said that Musk has directed Twitter's teams to find up to $1 billion in annual infrastructure cost savings.
He had already cleared out of the company's senior ranks, firing its chief executive and top finance and legal executives. Some of the people sitting atop the company's advertising, marketing and human resources divisions have left the company's advertising, marketing, and human resources divisions for the past week.
Musk's first week as Twitter's owner has been marked by chaos and uncertainty. Two company-wide meetings were scheduled, but were canceled hours later. Employees told Reuters they were left to piece together information through media reports, private messaging groups and anonymous forums.
The layoffs have chilled Twitter's famously open corporate culture, which has been lauded by many of its employees.
If you're in an office or on your way to an office, return home, according to the email on Thursday.
A number of people flooded the company's Slack channels shortly after the email landed in employee inboxes to say goodbye, two employees told Reuters. The sources said that someone invited Musk to join the channel.