Two Twitter ‘data engineers’ claim they have been laid off outside HQ

Two men identifying themselves as axed Twitter employees claimed Elon Musk has already started laying off Twitter workers.

The new ‘Chief Twit’ reportedly wielded the ax on Friday morning just hours after taking over the social media giant following a dramatic $44billion takeover.

He fired an entire team of data engineers, with two of them seen marched out of its San Francisco head office with their belongings stuffed in cardboard boxes, according to CNBC.

They were said to be ‘visibly shaken’ and one – named Daniel Johnson- even told the outlet he owned a Tesla and does not know how he will be able to make the payments.

‘It’s somewhere I worked at for six years and everything suddenly changed,’ Johnson told reporters about losing his job at the social media company. 

It comes after Musk formally took over Twitter late last night and sacked several top executives including its CEO, CFO and chief lawyer.

He also overturned lifetime bans and restrictions on a raft of famous faces booted off the platform, including Donald Trump and Kanye West. 

Musk, however, Tweeted on Friday that ‘no major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen,’ without the approval of a new content moderation council that has ‘widely diverse viewpoints.’  

Elon Musk has fired an entire team of Twitter data engineers as reportedly sacked employees Rahul Ligma (left) and Daniel Johnson (right) are pictured walking out of the San Francisco office on Friday afternoon 

One of the men lamented the alleged loss of his job, saying: ‘It’s somewhere I worked at for 6 years and everything suddenly changed’ 

Rahul identified himself as a software engineer who was let go from Twitter’s data team

Both men were reportedly carrying boxes of their belongings from Twitter headquarters 

The new ‘Chief Twit’ wielded the ax on Friday morning just hours after taking over the social media giant following a dramatic $44billion takeover

Musk said that he will be forming a ‘diverse’ content moderation council to make decisions about content and whose account can get reinstated 

On Thursday, Musk gave the boot to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and CFO Ned Segal, along with Twitter lawyer Vijaya Gadde, who was widely considered the ‘head of censorship’ at the company. 

Gadde walks away with a sizeable payout – a total of $72million in stocks that she owned, salary and benefits and stocks that had not yet vested when she was in her position but which are now paid out as part of the deal. 

MarketWatch reports that Gadde, Agrawal and Segal take a combined ‘golden parachute’ of $204million; Agrawal gets $66million and Segal takes $65million.

Musk has not yet publicly named their replacements but he is expected to act as interim CEO at least on a temporary basis. 

As Musk ushered them out last night, he asked Tesla engineers to visit HQ today to start rewriting the website’s code.

Among his plans is to open source algorithms to increase transparency for users about how their data is used to suggest content to them, and to add an ‘edit’ button for all.

Musk celebrated his Twitter takeover on Friday, saying that the platform would be freed under his rule following his criticisms over its suspension policies

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