Elon Musk bought and immediately took over management at Twitter a week ago.
New Delhi:
On a day when new boss Elon Musk triggered massive layoffs on Twitter, sacking half of its Indian workforce, former India chief of Twitter Manish Maheshwari said he didn’t expect “this to happen quickly”. “.
Two things have been affected on Twitter at the same time, he told NDTV.
“There is an imminent slowdown – companies are tightening their belts. But this case is facing the whole Elon factor and the pressure they are facing to get in better shape than what they have inherited,” Mr. Maheshwari said. The status of Twitter until a year ago.
Speaking on the 8-dollar charge plan for Verified Handles in addition to dismissals and other planned cost-cutting, he pointed to a general tendency to “go to profit.”
“We have seen that in the startup world in India and also globally,” he said.
While the number of people fired in India was not immediately available, sources said that employees of the sales, engineering and partnership divisions were “affected”, apart from the disbanding of the two departments. overall more than Nearly 50 per cent of the workforce of 200 have been sackedSources said.
Twitter India product head Shirish Andhare has removed his designation from his Twitter bio, but did not respond to media queries. money control informed of.
On the reasoning behind the big and fast-paced changes – Elon Musk took ownership just a week ago – Mr. Maheshwari said, “I think one thing is clear. There’s a little bit of consolidation … that important work is central. such as engineering and content moderation.” This means less attention to regional specialties.
“Usually such things take time. There is knowledge transfer and handover-takeover of tasks. Here they seem to have taken a high-level approach that ‘Okay, are you working on an important product,’ And are you working on a significant revenue stream or set of clients?’ If the answer is no, you’ve been fired,” he explained.
“I think it’s a very hard and broad brush,” he said.
He described the work culture at the company when he was there. “We stood up for each other. There was also a focus on learning and teaching. The focus was on creating something with the local context in mind. That’s all changing.”
Asked whether the reduction in content moderation, in particular because of the staff cuts, has led advertisers to scale back Twitter ad spend, he said “brand protection” is important to advertisers. “They need to make sure their ads are shown next to the right types of content.”
Content moderation — for example, flagging or removing deceptive and hateful content — has suffered since Elon Musk took office. He has said that “activists” who are against freedom of expression have misled the companies.