Twitter co-founder and newly minted CEO Jack Dorsey announced sweeping layoffs today, as 336 employees, or 8 percent of the company’s workforce, are losing their jobs.
The news comes just eight days after Dorsey was named the company’s new permanent CEO. He’s taking over during a pivotal moment for the company, as Twitter has become a household name, but user growth has flatlined recently.
Made some tough but necessary decisions that enable Twitter to move with greater focus and reinvest in our growth. http://t.co/BWd7EiGAF2
— jack (@jack) October 13, 2015
Engineering teams will be affected by the cuts, but a Twitter spokesperson declined to say if there will be any layoff’s at the company’s engineering center in Seattle. The company first opened a Seattle office in 2014, and this summer doubled the size of its space at the Century Square building in the heart of downtown. Twitter employs just under 100 people in Seattle.
“Product and Engineering are going to make the most significant structural changes to reflect our plan ahead,” Dorsey wrote in a letter to all employees on Tuesday. “We feel strongly that Engineering will move much faster with a smaller and nimbler team, while remaining the biggest percentage of our workforce. And the rest of the organization will be streamlined in parallel.”
News of the cuts first leaked out on Friday afternoon, but was made official Tuesday morning. One affected employee from San Francisco, Bart Teeuwisse, wrote on Twitter that he learned he was getting let go when he was unable to sign into his Twitter email account this morning.
I've been impacted by $TWTR's layoffs. This is how I found out this morning. pic.twitter.com/MbjFwYLcU2
— Bart Teeuwisse ❄ (@bartt) October 13, 2015
