Former Twitter employee reflects on losing job in 'confusing' layoffs

Former Twitter employee Simon Balmain on Friday (November 4) told how he was sacked as the firm cut workers' access to internal systems after telling employees they would be informed by email about whether they were being laid off.

Balmain, based in Birmingham in the English Midlands region, said he was "holding tight" to see how the process will play out, after he was locked out of the company's internal systems amid expected job cuts.

Balmain, who describes himself in his Twitter bio as 'Former Senior Community Manager' at Twitter, told Reuters that he'd received an email in the early hours of the the morning detailing expected layoffs.

"It said that if we would be affected, we'd head to our personal email, if not to our work email. And it was about an hour after that that I found that my work laptop was remotely wiped and access to Slack and Gmail revoked." Balmain said.

Twitter Inc temporarily closed its offices following a week of uncertainty about the company's future under new owner Elon Musk.

The social media company said in an email to staff it would tell them by 9 a.m. Pacific time on Friday (12 p.m. EDT/1600 GMT) about staff cuts.

Musk, the world's richest person, is looking to cut around 3,700 Twitter staff, or about half the workforce, as he seeks to slash costs and impose a demanding new work ethic, according to internal plans reviewed by Reuters this week.

The company's content moderation team is expected to be impacted, according to tweets by Twitter staff.

Musk has promised to restore free speech while preventing Twitter from descending into a "hellscape". However, his reassurances have failed to prevent major advertisers from threatening to withdraw from the platform.