A Twitter employee says he was fired 'while sleeping' and woke up locked out of Slack and email: 'There is always a new low'

• Jaseem Abid says he was was fired "while sleeping" after Twitter slashed jobs under Elon Musk.
• The former software engineer tweeted that his laptop was "remotely wiped out" overnight.

A Twitter employee said he was laid off while sleeping and woke up on Friday with no access to Slack, work email or his laptop.

Jaseem Abid tweeted that he was fired before he received a confirmation email and realized that his laptop had been "remotely wiped."

"Woke up to no slack/gmail/office access and laptop remotely wiped out. Got fired without even a confirmation email while sleeping? There is always a new low," he wrote.

Twitter staff were told in a memo on Thursday that they would find out by email on Friday morning if they were getting laid off. Half of Twitter's workforce has been axed and Elon Musk later tweeted that he had "no choice" but to do so.

Abid worked at the London office and only joined in April this year as a senior software engineer, according to his LinkedIn profile. He later added: "To confirm, I eventually got that template email but what an awful way to go through this process."

Abid and Twitter did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Despite staff being told that they would learn if they were fired by an email, some found out when realizing they had been locked out of their laptop or email.

One former Twitter employee, who is eight months pregnant, said access to her work laptop was cut off on Thursday night, before she was sent an official announcement email. Another former staffer said he couldn't log in to his laptop early Friday morning.

A class-action lawsuit was filed Thursday after the memo was sent to staff and it claimed that the layoffs violated California and federal employment law. The suit, filed in San Francisco federal court, asked it to force Twitter to comply with the WARN Act.