If you were work for Twitter, you were probably twitching a bit as the day started.
Twitter’s new boss, Elon Musk, is carrying out the layoffs he had warned were coming. As many as half of the social media giant’s huge work force may not have a job at Twitter by the end of the day.
Musk is said to have sent an email this week that read, “In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday.
But Twitter is not the only tech or tech-driven company that is reducing the number of its employees. Amazon, Lyft, Apple and Qualcomm along with some big media companies like CNN have announced layoffs or pauses in hiring in recent weeks.
What’s happening? A report at Axios says that over the past decade tech workers, especially, got used to high salaries and plush benefits while the pandemic really hurt a lot of other kinds of businesses.
In another report today, the Washington Post says worker productivity in the first half of this year fell at the sharpest rate since 1947…raising “new questions about the shift to hybrid schedules and remote work.” The report says executives, under pressure to boost employee performance are seeking a post-pandemic normal.
But with the economy still healing from the worst pandemic in a hundred years, it could take a while before things settle into whatever a new normal turns out to be.
(Photo Getty Images)