Twitter founder Jack Dorsey sorry for mass layoffs

Washington, Nov 05: Twitter founder Jack Dorsey on Saturday apologised to the employees of the social media platform who were fired after Tesla CEO Elon Musk took over the company.

"Folks at Twitter past and present are strong and resilient. They will always find a way no matter how difficult the moment. I realize many are angry with me. I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation: I grew the company size too quickly. I apologize for that," Mr Dorsey tweeted.

"I am grateful for, and love, everyone who has ever worked on Twitter. I don't expect that to be mutual in this moment...or ever...and I understand," he added.

Musk has shown the door to top executives and half of the company's 7,500 employees after he formally acquired the company, last week.

Jack Dorsey, who co-founded Twitter in 2006, stepped down as the company's chief executive, last November. Parag Agarwal succeed him, but he has also been fired by Musk.

Presently, Dorsey is beta-testing a new social media application called 'Bluesky'.

Amid massive layoffs at Twitter across the world, including in India, and the subsequent backlash, the microblogging site's new owner Elon Musk on Saturday justified the move, saying there was "no choice" when the company was losing millions of dollars daily.

The company posted a net loss of USD 270 million in the second quarter ended on June 30 and compared to a profit of USD 66 million in the same period a year ago.

"Regarding Twitter's reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day," Musk tweeted.

"Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required," he added.

Hundreds of employees were handed the pink slips at Twitter on Friday as Musk started overhauling the social media platform which he bought for a whopping USD 44 billion late last month.

Twitter has also fired the majority of its over 200 employees in India. Sources said the layoffs are across engineering, sales and marketing, and communications teams.