Twitter staff tweeted their experiences of being locked out of company Slack and email accounts the evening before mass layoffs were due to be announced

• Twitter workers have shared their experiences of being locked out of company Slack and email accounts.
• Twitter was expected to announce layoffs Friday but terminations began Thursday evening.

Twitter employees on Thursday shared their experiences of being blocked from company Slack and email accounts as Elon Musk's company began layoffs.

Workers began getting locked out around 8 p.m. PT on Thursday, multiple employees earlier told Insider.

Simon Balmain, a senior community manager for Twitter in the UK, wrote in a tweet at 7:30 p.m. PT on Thursday that he'd been remotely logged out of his work laptop and removed from Slack. Balmain told the BBC he was awake when his access was blocked because he was working Los Angeles hours.

A Twitter user who described themself as an employee replied to Balmain's tweet to say they were also cut off from work platforms. Another replied: "All your access suddenly shut off in the middle of the night? Same."

Twitter emailed staff earlier Thursday saying layoffs would be announced at 9 a.m. PT on Friday. However, employee terminations began Thursday evening, Insider reported.

Rumman Chowdry, a director at Twitter, tweeted a picture Thursday evening appearing to show a company Google account login page saying his password w changed less than an hour ago. "Has it already started? Happy layoff eve!" Chowdry wrote.

Another purported Twitter employee posted a similar photo of their account login page not accepting their password.

One apparent staff member with "ex-Tweep" in their bio tweeted around 9:30 p.m. PT on Thursday that their entire team had been locked out of their company accounts. Another said just after 10 p.m. PT that they were "officially out."

A Twitter employee who's eight months pregnant and has worked at the company since 2019 tweeted about her laptop access being "cut off" on Thursday.

Insider has reached out to the individuals mentioned in this article.

More than 1,000 Twitter staff had been cut from the company's workforce by around 11 p.m. PT on Thursday, according to staff and messages obtained by Insider's Kali Hays. The layoffs affected employees around the world, from the US, to the UK, to Singapore. About 3,700 people were selected to be laid off — around 50% of Twitter's workforce, Insider previously reported.

Twitter didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment made outside US business hours.