Roughly half of the workforce was laid off under Musk.
According to the New York Times, Musk wanted to lay off employees before they received their bonuses, but he was forced to delay them because of the cost.
The payroll audit was ordered by Musk because he was worried that "ghost employees" would get money.
Musk has been cautious about the use of bots on the social networking site. He's suspicious that some of the people who work for the company aren't real people.
Half of the company's workforce has been cut since Musk took charge. The New York Times reported Friday that, during the process, Musk wanted to make sure that his employees were real humans before giving them regular bonuses.
The Times reported that one day after his deal to buy Twitter was finalized, Musk met with HR executives and said he wanted to make job cuts. Employees were due to get vested stock as a regularly scheduled retention bonus on November 1, and one team at Twitter built a model showing that laying people off before then could mean millions of dollars in legal fees and fines.
Four people told the Times that Musk agreed to delay after learning how much it would cost.
Before paying the bonuses, Musk ordered a payroll audit to make sure his employees were real humans, out of concern that ghost employees would get some of the money, according to the Times.
According to the Times, Robert Kaiden, who was chosen by Musk to carry out the audit, asked managers to confirm if they knew certain employees.
On November 4th, it announced mass layoffs. Insider previously reported that some staffers were locked out of services like Slack and email the day before they were supposed to start. Some employees said they were called back after Musk's advisers realized that they were essential to the success of the company.
Do you have a story to tell? You can email this reporter from a non-work device.
Business Insider has an article on it.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
