- Elon Musk began to terminate employees late Thursday, several people told Insider.
- Access to work platforms was suddenly cut off for many at Twitter, making it clear they'd been let go.
Twitter employees began losing access to work platforms soon after the now-Elon Musk-owned company told them to expect layoffs to begin the following day.
Workers suddenly started to get locked out of things like Slack and email around 8 p.m. PT on Thursday night, multiple employees told Insider. Despite no official note explaining they had been let go, the employees were certain they could count themselves among the 3,700 of their colleagues expected to be hit with Musk's planned layoffs.
"It's going East to West," one person said. People working for Twitter in London were first to find out, then New York, then people working remotely in the Midwest. California, Twitter's biggest hub, came last, multiple employees said.
"My entire team is gone," one person affected by the layoffs in New York said. They worked on a team of 30-plus people. Another person estimated that 90% of their team was cut.
Meanwhile, Musk ignored the layoffs publicly, tweeting "Why is small talk even legal" as his employees were being let go.
By closer to 11 pm PT, more than 1,000 people at Twitter had lost their jobs, according to employees and messages seen by Insider. The cuts went across the company, from Singapore to the U.K. to Fan Francisco, hitting every department. Content moderation and health, advertising, data storage, product, legal, program management, all were hit with layoffs. Cuts were deep in most areas, but some were so drastic one person said they "don't know how we keep things going in some areas."
Hundreds of Twitter workers began posting to Twitter about losing their jobs, too. Many wrote of gratitude for the years they spent working at the platform and for their colleagues. "Best job I ever had," one person said. "So it ends," another wrote.
"It was a wild ride, but I dont regret a single second of it and I would do it over again in a heartbeat," another said.
Just hours before, Twitter staffers received their first communication from the company since Musk took over last week. It was an unsigned note explaining they could expect layoffs to begin on Friday, sent after Insider reported such plans. Twitter said all affected workers would receive an email Friday morning at 9 am ET or 6 am PT and that's how they would find out they had been let go.
When employees began to be cut on Thursday night, no one had received such an email, multiple employees said.
In the note from Twitter, the company also said it was "temporarily" closing all offices. Employees were then told to leave immediately, with office security proceeding to go throughout the offices in New York and San Francisco ensuring employees were gone or leaving.
The closures were sudden and took some workers off guard, particularly as Musk had started to demand intense levels of work since taking over Twitter, leading some employees to sleep at the office. The immediacy of moving people out of the office, with no date of when they could return, made more sense after people began being laid off that night.
"It's a break-up by text," a person affected by the layoffs said.
Earlier in the evening, responding to the news that they could expect layoffs on Friday, hundreds of Twitter workers began to flood Slack with blue hearts, signifying love for Twitter colleagues, and the "salute" emoji, according to employees and messages seen by Insider.
"The Titanic hit an iceberg and we are that band playing music going down with the ship," an employee said. Last week, Musk quickly fired Twitter's entire C-suite and a number of high ranking managers, as Insider reported. Employees received no internal goodbye messages from any of them.
Throughout Thursday, workers in the office in New York and San Francisco were taking photos with one another, two employees said, an effort to make it "the best possible final day," one of them noted. On Slack and in Private texts, employees jokingly referred to Musk's planned mass layoffs as "the Thanos snap," a reference to the Marvel character who made half the universe disappear with a snap of his fingers.
"I'm actually relieved," another impacted worker said. "It's literally been the 'Hunger Games,'" another person said of the last week working under Musk.
Musk has already gone about remaking Twitter in his own image, demanding constant work, rapid turnarounds on projects he's deemed "critical" and removing perks employees enjoyed.
On Thursday, workers realized a company-wide "day of rest," a weekday where the entire company did not work, had been removed from their calendars. The days were put in place by former CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey who frequently urged people to avoid burnout and to take time for themselves over work. Musk is now demanding people at Twitter "literally work 24/7" and at a "maniacal" pace, as Insider reported.
Twitter under Musk is poised to be much different, as well as much smaller.
Are you a Twitter employee or someone else with insight to share? Contact Kali Hays at khays@insider.com, on secure messaging app Signal at 949-280-0267, or through Twitter DM at @hayskali. Reach out using a non-work device.