Twitter Inc temporarily closed its offices on Friday after telling employees they would be informed by email later in the day whether they would be laid off.
The company’s new owner and CEO Elon Musk is expected to cut about 3,700 jobs, or about half of Twitter’s workforce, as he seeks to cut costs at the social platform he bought just a week ago for $44 billion (44.9 billion euro).
Twitter said in an email that its offices would be temporarily closed and all access suspended in order to “help ensure the security of each employee, as well as Twitter’s systems and customer data.”
The company said employees not affected by such a move would be notified through their work email addresses.
While the staff who had been dismissed would be notified of the next steps on their personal email addresses.
Meanwhile, some employees tweeted that their access to the company’s IT system had been blocked and feared it suggested they had been fired.
“Looks like I’m unemployed,” tweeted a user with the account @SBkcrn, whose profile is described as a former senior Twitter community manager.
An email to Twitter staff reportedly said: “The team, in an effort to put Twitter on a healthy path, we will be going through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday.”