Firing Spree at Twitter: The Price of Cold-heartedness

Mass firings are not uncommon in the tech industry. But they primarily hurt the companies in the long term.

Twitter boss Elon Musk is firing half of the company’s 7,500 employees now that he has taken over the messaging service. In an email late Thursday night, Twitter announced that it was locking the offices and no one could enter. The next morning, employees learned — again via email — whether or not they had a job. This is an inhuman corporate policy.

Yet this process is not an isolated event in the tech industry. Last December, the CEO of the online mortgage lender Better.com fired more than 900 employees on a Zoom call. Here in Austria, the Vienna-based cryptocurrency platform drew negative headlines after it fired hundreds of employees by email and then logged them out of the entire system. Obviously, staff do not receive impersonal mass firings well. Such cold-hearted firing practices do not, however, only cause resentment among those who are affected.

This hire-and-fire policy sends a message to the working world that everyone is replaceable. And skilled workers who seek a company with great potential are quickly shown the door. At a time when many are thinking about withdrawing from work, — think: the great resignation and quiet quitting — no company can afford to do this. The richest man in the world may also realize that soon.