Elon Musk plans to eliminate half of Twitter jobs to cut costs

Elon Musk plans to eliminate about 3,700 jobs at Twitter Inc., or half of the social media company's workforce, in a bid to drive down costs following his $44 billion acquisition, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Twitter's new owner aims to inform affected staffers Friday, said the people, who requested anonymity discussing non-public plans.

Musk also intends to reverse the company's existing work-from-anywhere policy, asking remaining employees to report to offices though some exceptions could be made, the people said.

Musk and a team of advisers have been weighing a range of scenarios for job cuts and other policy changes at San Francisco-based Twitter, the people said, adding that the terms of the headcount reduction could still change.

In one scenario being considered, laid off workers will be offered 60 days' worth of severance pay, two of the people said.

Musk is under pressure to find ways to slash costs of a business for which he says he overpaid. The billionaire agreed to pay $54.20 a share in April just as markets tumbled.

He then tried for months to get out of the transaction, alleging that the company misled him about the prevalence of fake accounts.

Twitter sued to force Musk to make good on his agreement, and in recent weeks, Musk caved, resigning himself to closing the deal at the agreed-upon terms. The take-private deal closed Thursday.

Twitter employees have been bracing for layoffs ever since Musk took over and immediately ousted much of the top executive team, including Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal, finance chief Ned Segal and senior legal staffers Vijaya Gadde and Sean Edgett.

In the days that followed, other departures have included Chief Marketing Officer Leslie Berland, Chief Customer Officer Sarah Personette, and Jean-Philippe Maheu, who was vice president of global client solutions.