Twitter asks dozens of laid-off staff to return, Meta prepares for large-scale layoffs

After laying off nearly half of its staff worldwide on Friday, Twitter is now asking dozens of fired employees to return to work.

Twitter said some of these employees were laid off by mistake. But others are being asked to come back because the management realised their skills and experience are necessary to build the new features Elon Musk envisions, reported Bloomberg.

The billionaire entrepreneur who also happens to be the richest man in the world has been making drastic and quick changes after acquiring Twitter for $44 billion. He said there has been a sharp drop in the company's revenue and it is losing $4 million every day. Twitter had shut down its trust and safety team, human rights, accessibility, AI ethics, and curation teams. In India, most people lost jobs in engineering, sales, marketing, and communication teams.

Many criticised the mass lay off which is leaving a lot of people without jobs at a time a recession is anticipated.

On the other hand, Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc is planning large-scale layoffs that are likely to affect thousands of employees, reported the Wall Street Journal. Meta forecasted a weak holiday quarter in October. Sources close to the matter cite slow global economic growth, competition from TikTok, privacy changes from Apple, massive spending on metaverse, and regulations as reasons.

In late October, Mark Zuckerberg said the company is going to focus on a small number of high-priority growth areas in 2023. "Some teams will grow meaningfully, but most other teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year."

Several technology firms are resorting to layoffs and hiring freezes in the face of slow global economic growth caused by higher interest rates, rising inflation, and the energy crisis in Europe. Microsoft Corp and Snap Inc have also cut jobs and scaled back hiring.