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If anyone's curious, Twitter is now down to 1300 employees, from over 7000!

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/20/twitter-is-down-to-fewer-than-550-full-time-engineers.html

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/21/23471021/elon-musk-twitter-layoffs-sales-partnerships-workers

From the Bloomberg article that it references:

"An internal counter of employees currently reads 2,750, one person said, though some resignations and cuts may still be in the process of being counted. Twitter had more than 7,000 employees before Musk took over in late October."

When will this resolve?

NYTimes reporting that at least 1200 employees left, putting them well over the 50% mark. This should resolve YES. @Lorenzo

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/18/technology/elon-musk-twitter-workers-quit.html

Does constructive dismissal count as firing?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/twitter-offices-closed-1.6655881

"Hundreds of Twitter employees are estimated to be leaving the beleaguered social media company following an ultimatum from new owner Elon Musk that staffers sign up for "long hours at high intensity," — or leave."

If the deal is that everyone is being asked to work longer and harder for the same salary or quit, and they mostly decide to quit, that's a staff-reducing decision that's analogous to firing, to the point that it's legally considered termination. This is almost certainly why severance is being offered; otherwise they'd get sued a lot, and lose. The question is whether a business practice that's legally equivalent to termination counts for the purposes of this market.

@Endovior I would think so

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/16/musk-twitter-email-ultimatum-termination/

Washington Post reporting that employees have to agree by end of day Thursday to be part of “new Twitter” and work extreme hours or be fired. I think we can say safely that this will put them over the 50% line, though of course we should wait for confirmation that people were actually fired because of this.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-17/musk-softens-remote-work-mandate-to-retain-twitter-staffers

Well, it sounds like a lot are leaving, though maybe Musk will back-down?

@Gabrielle It sounds like they just locked everybody out of the buildings: https://twitter.com/ZoeSchiffer/status/1593391604785504257

Reporting that another 20 were fired for allegedly questioning Musk in company slack

https://mastodon.social/@taylorlorenz/109349236848981264

It sounds like we've at least had 3738 employees fired in the initial layoff, then another 20 now, which would be more than the 3750 number we had earlier, though also some people were re-hired?

@Gabrielle I think people being fired and rehired are still people who were "fired"; I think we probably shouldn't double count them in the unlikely event that some of the 20 were rehired-fired people, but otherwise, fair game to me.

Reporting that 4,400 contract employees were eliminated yesterday

https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/1591848844899540992?s=20&t=t1ar06X5EezHd4CHjtaEOw

https://www.engadget.com/twitter-reportedly-cuts-contract-workers-173755779.html

@kazoo "After laying off 50 percent of the company’s employees..."
engadget is reporting that the criteria here is already true. Is engadget not a 'trustworthy news source"? Or is it really alone in reporting that this already happened?

@Adam I think it's rounding to a whole number. More precise reporting seems to have this a bit below 50%. But unclear.

@MartinRandall Do contractor count to total or this not people?

@kazoo Not employees in normal definitions.

Also, if we include contractors in the numerator we also have to include them in the denominator, and I don't have numbers for how many contractors indirectly worked on Twitter in 2022.

@MartinRandall hmm, since inconclusive maybe we can resolve it n/a. i however am happy how ever, any lay off is scary for all us! yikes

@kazoo If it was my market I'd resolve 50% or N/A and also curse Elon for laying off precisely enough people to make market resolution absurdly difficult.

We at least shouldn’t resolve before the designated end date - another round of layoffs is plausible and would result in a YES.

@MartinRandall @Gabrielle Agree with both!

Lol wow - https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/1589075543420325888

Multiple sources and Twitter Blind chats now saying that the company has begun to reach out to some people it laid off yesterday asking them to come back. Whoops!

@Lorenzo For the purposes of this market, if someone is fired and immediately rehired does it still count as being fired? (I assume yes?) I love how reality always manages to throw fun edge cases at these markets 🙂

@BenjaminCosman I also think it definitely should count.

@jack Lol I think it depends on the specifics? Were they actually technically fired and rehired? Or just some miscommunication where they were told they were fired while they weren't?

@Lorenzo I think the way this normally works is that everyone involved pretends it was a miscommunication so that there isn't as much paperwork.

@BenjaminCosman Agreed -- defining a verifiable outcome completely crisply is surprisingly hard