In his third week of owning the company, Musk fired employees who criticized him and eliminated contractors.
According to three people with knowledge of the matter, Mr. Musk ordered his team to fire nearly two dozen employees who were against him. The billionaire mocked the former employees after he confirmed the exits on the platform.
The work force was cut over the weekend. Five people familiar with the matter said that many of the contractors were let go without warning.
Mr. Musk has painted a bleak picture of the finances of the company. Half of the company's 7,500 workers were laid off this month. He said last week that he needed to become more of a core part of the company to survive. Six people familiar with the matter said that Mr. Musk wants to eliminate middle managers.
Mr Musk is trying to keep the staff motivated. He told employees in a message that they would be awarded exceptional amounts of stock for exceptional performance. Mr. Musk likened the structure to how his private rocket manufacturer works.
There was a quick change. Since completing his $44 billion acquisition of the social media company in October, Musk has moved quickly to change it. Some of the changes have been looked at.
The person is going private. The delisting of the company's stock is part of Mr. Musk's acquisition of the company. Not having to make quarterly financial disclosures is one of the benefits of being a private company. Private companies are not subject to the same scrutiny as public ones.
There are layoffs. About 3,700 jobs were eliminated after Mr. Musk closed the deal. The engineering and machine learning units, the teams that manage content moderation, and the sales and advertising departments were among the divisions that were laid off.
It is possible to moderate content. After closing the deal to buy the company, Mr. Musk said that a content moderation council would be formed. Advertisers have stopped spending on the platform because of the fear that Mr. Musk will loosen the rules.
There could be other changes. As Mr. Musk and his advisers look for ways to make more money at the company, they are said to have considered adding paid direct messages, which would allow users to send private messages to high-profile users. The company has filed paperwork to make it easier to process payments.
They did not respond to questions. The contractor cuts were reported by the platformer.
The firings came after Mr. Musk wrote on Sunday that the way it handled data was slowing it down.
Eric Frohnhoefer replied, "This is not right." Mr. Musk invited Mr. Frohnhoefer to fix the mistake.
On Monday, Mr. Musk said that Mr. Frohnheofer was no longer with him. He deleted the post.
He did not reply to the request for comment.
People briefed on the plan said that Mr. Musk was asked to comb through messages in the internal chat platform to find employees who were insubordinate. They were looking for criticism through employees' social media accounts. Those deemed rulebreakers received emails early in the morning. Emails seen by The Times show that they were fired on Tuesday.
Six people familiar with the situation said that several employees who shared the news of Mr. Frohnhoefer's firing were cut. Emails seen by The Times show that they were terminated for violating company policy.
On Tuesday, Mr. Musk apologized for firing the people. The immense talent will be used elsewhere. He made fun of a former employee by suggesting that the person's posts about him were caused by a tragic case of adult-onset Tourettes.
A data science contractor who worked on tracking political misinformation lost access to her email and internal systems on Saturday after she was not told of layoffs. According to an email seen by The Times, she was told that her last day would be Monday.
Ms. Ingle is a contractor. I don't know if I'll be able to pay rent or provide for my children.
A request for comment was not responded to.
Two people familiar with the issue said that some employees are worried that they won't be reimbursed for work-related expense reports that they filed before the layoffs. Some have accumulated thousands of dollars in expenses that have not been paid out, while others have been told that expenses that were not approved before mass layoffs will not be paid back.
Six people said that a companywide reorganization could happen before the end of the week. The flatter structure was created by the elimination of many managers. In his first meeting with employees, Mr. Musk said design, program management and engineering would report to him, according to a recording.
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