Billionaire Elon Musk has fired another 200 employees at Twitter, including the executive behind the revival of his paid-premium service, according to a report.
The latest round of job cuts equates to about 10% of Twitter’s drastically reduced workforce, which stood at 7,500 people before Musk bought the company in October.
Twitter on Saturday laid off at least 200 of its 2,000 employees, according to the New York Times. The NYT reported that redundancies affected jobs including product managers, data scientists, and engineers who ensure the site runs efficiently.
Esther Crawford, director of product management at Twitter, who oversaw the introduction of charging for account verification, was reportedly among the affected employees.
Musk’s hard-driving approach to management was exemplified in November by a photo of Crawford sleeping on the floor of Twitter’s offices, which he retweeted with the hashtag #SleepWhereYouWork.
Crawford tweeted on Sunday that he was “deeply proud” of his team, as he criticized people who mocked their achievements, although he did not directly confirm his departure.
Twitter’s relaunch of its premium subscription service was hit hard in November after some users took advantage of paying for a verified account by launching multiple impersonator accounts.
Nintendo, pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly and American politician Ted Cruz were among the firms and public figures who found themselves impersonated by Blue Tick accounts.
Twitter Blue was relaunched in December and has 180,000 subscribers in the US, compared to a global monthly user base of more than 250 million people, according to news site Information.
Musk has identified growth in subscription revenue as a key goal for Twitter, which prior to its acquisition relied on advertising for most of its income, but has seen ad revenue decline due to issues including the impersonation problem.
The job losses come against a backdrop of financial uncertainty at Twitter, a company that has historically been loss-making and needed to generate cash flow to pay off significant debts inherited after Musk’s $44b acquisition.
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Information Source: TheGuardian