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Newly owned by Elon Musk, Twitter Inc. fired more than 90% of its staff in India over the weekend and only a dozen Indian are left in the tech giant. The layoffs were proposed as a part of global reductions by new owner Elon Musk severely depleting its engineering and product staff in a potential growth market. The company employed just over 200 people in India, and the cuts left it with just about a dozen staff, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Indian engineers play an important role in the development and growth of global internet companies such as Twitter, Meta Platforms Inc., and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, which are relying on its large potential pool of new online users. Yet the companies are also facing increasingly strict content regulations aimed at reining in big tech firms in the country. About 70% of the jobs cut in India were from the product and engineering team which worked on a global mandate, one of the people said. Positions were also slashed across functions including marketing, public policy, and corporate communications, the people said. Globally, San Francisco, California-based Twitter reduced its headcount by about half, or roughly 3,700 workers. However, the companies are facing “increasingly strict content regulations aimed at reining in big tech firms in the country.”
In India, about 70 percent of the jobs cut were from the product and engineering teams that worked on a global mandate, one of the people told Bloomberg, which explicitly exposed a pathetic approach from Twitter’s new management.
“Positions were also slashed across functions including marketing, public policy, and corporate communications, the people said. Globally, San Francisco, California-based Twitter reduced its headcount by about half or roughly 3,700 workers,”
Some of the most “febrile political conversations” amongst various competing parties in India take place on Twitter, with allegations and accusations taking over the social media platform by storm. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has over 84 million followers on the service.
“It is unclear how Twitter expects to moderate that discourse with its newly reduced staff in the country, which has more than 100 languages,” the report said, adding that the company has about 3,700 employees remaining globally.
Musk is pushing those who remain to move quickly in shipping new features, and in some cases, employees have even slept at the office to meet new deadlines. Twitter’s India offices are located in New Delhi, the financial capital of Mumbai, and the southern tech hub of Bengaluru.
The company has about 3,700 employees remaining globally. Musk is pushing those who remain to move quickly in shipping new features, and in some cases, employees have even slept at the office to meet new deadlines.
Though Twitter did ask some of the fired employees to come back that were fired none of the called-back employees were Indian. A person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named to protect others’ identities, told Insider that five employees had been invited back: “These individuals are essential for Twitter’s ecosystem to function. Goons quickly realized and are asking them back.”
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