Elon Musk backpedals on firing Twitter staff by asking some to please come back

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently fired half of the employees at Twitter, and now reports are coming out that the company is asking some of those employees to come back.

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The mass layoff happened on Friday, with Musk announcing the news publicly by saying that Twitter's reduction in force of approximately 7,500 employees "unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day", while adding that everyone who was fired was offered 3 months of severance, which is, according to Musk, 50% higher than what is legally required. The layoffs sparked major concern over Twitter's content moderation capabilities and if the platform was able to maintain its standards and policies on the content allowed on the platform.

Twitter's head of safety, Yoel Roth, took to his Twitter account in a series of Tweets where he explained that the layoffs affected approximately 15% of Twitter's Trust and Safety organization, and that front-line content moderation workers were the least affected out of the entire layoffs. Furthermore, Roth explained that more than 80% of Twitter's incoming content moderation volume was unaffected by Musk's 50% reduction in staff and that Twitter's daily volume of content moderation across the platform remained unchanged throughout the firing period.

Now, reports are coming out from Bloomberg, which claims that dozens of former Twitter employees that were fired from their positions are getting requests from Twitter to rejoin the company, with some of those former employees being let go from the company by "mistake". According to two people close to the matter that spoke with Bloomberg, some of the employees that were fired are now being contacted by Twitter management and informed that their skills and experience are necessary to construct Musk's vision of the company.

Additionally, Twitter rehiring former employees allows it to dodge a class action lawsuit, while also speculation points toward the social media platform simultaneously pleasing advertisers as it would be rehiring content moderation staff the advertiser's trust. Furthermore, the company may have simply fired too many people and has now realized it needs more hands-on deck to achieve Musk's vision. All of the above and more are likely explanations as to why Musk has decided to get some former staff back.