Fear and anxiety rampant at Twitter India as Musk starts downsizing

With Twitter asking its contract employees to not come to office and wait for an email to know their fate at the company, anxiety and fear among its Indian employees is also at an all-time high.

People in the know described the mood within the India development centres and across all segments as “very fearful”, with people not sure if they will have a job or not.

“Nobody knows if they will have a job tomorrow, and the fear of getting fired just got real,” said a person who is aware of the situation but did not wish to be named.

Meanwhile, reports have already stated that the engineering and development teams have been asked not to work on any new projects.

An email sent to Twitter India did not elicit any response till the filing on this report.

Meanwhile, globally, the company has asked contract workers not to come to the office and wait for an email. This comes shortly after the company discontinued its work-from-anywhere policy and said that it was downsizing.

In an email to its employees, the company said: “Given the nature of our distributed workforce and our desire to inform impacted individuals as quickly as possible, communications for this process will take place via email. By 9 am PST on Friday, November 4, everyone will receive an individual email with the subject line: Your Role at Twitter. Please check your mail including your spam folder.”

Twitter also said that its offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended. “If you are in an office or on your way to office, please return home,” said the email.

Bloomberg had earlier reported that Elon Musk, Twitter’s new chief executive officer (CEO), plans to slash about 3,700 jobs – or half of the company’s workforce – in a bid to cut costs.

Meanwhile, there were several tweets from Twitter’s employees across the globe saying that their remote access to logins had been suspended.