Twitter Is Planning Company-Wide Layoffs for Next Week

Jack Dorsey was named permanent CEO of Twitter on Monday, and a big reason he got the job was that as a co-founder, Dorsey isn’t afraid to make the tough, necessary decisions. He isn’t wasting much time.

Twitter is planning company-wide layoffs next week, according to multiple sources. It’s unclear how much of the staff will be culled, but insiders say it will likely affect most, if not all, departments.

The downsizing comes at the same time Twitter is restructuring its engineering organization to make it leaner and more efficient, these sources say. It’s likely that many of those impacted by the layoffs will be engineers, which make up about half the staff.

A Twitter spokesperson told Re/code, “We’re not commenting on rumor and speculation.”

Those close to the company have argued for years that Twitter has become too bloated. It reported roughly 4,100 employees last quarter, more than double the roughly 2,000 employees it had in Q2 2013 just before the IPO. Twitter’s user base has grown less than 50 percent in that time. Of course, some of the growth has come via acquisitions — Twitter has made plenty over the past two years. But still, the feeling from those close to the company is that Twitter’s engineering team is much larger than it needs to be.

The reorg also aligns with what Dorsey has been preaching for the last four months: That Twitter needs to be more focused. In June he told Re/code that the company needed to do a better job of “clarifying ownership” around projects, and he restructured Twitter’s product team in August to do just that.

Now, it appears, the rest of the staff will be reshuffled, too.

Update: Twitter stock is down more than 3 percent in after-hours trading on the news.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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