Twitter has released its third quarter earnings report under its newly appointed CEO. And besides sharing that ad revenues have jumped, monthly active users have stayed relatively flat, and trumpeting its recent product changes, the company also revealed that it expects corporate restructuring to cost between $5 million and $15 million next quarter.
That news comes as new-again chief executive Jack Dorsey lays off employees to cut the social network’s costs. In a not-so-jargon-free letter published with a tweet, Dorsey confirmed that Twitter expects to “part ways” with up to 336 people from “across the company,” with a special focus on the engineering team.
“Product and Engineering are going to make the most significant structural changes to reflect our plan ahead,” Dorsey wrote in the letter announcing the layoffs. “We feel strongly that engineering will move much faster with a smaller and nimbler team, while remaining the biggest percentage of our workforce.”
The layoffs came as a surprise to many in the company, at least some of whom found out they would have to start looking for work when they attempted to access their Twitter email accounts and were told their logins no longer worked. Others heard the news through phone calls or, if those were missed, voicemail.
Dorsey announced plans to give one-third of his Twitter stock (roughly 1 percent of the company) to remaining employees a little over a week later. That equates to a $200 million giveaway, which Dorsey explained as him preferring to “have a smaller part of something big than a bigger part of something small.” It seems the corollary is that he’d rather share a big chunk of money with a smaller team.
Now there’s a dollar amount attached to all the changes Dorsey plans to make now that he’s back at Twitter’s helm. The company’s stock fell in after-hours trading when the earnings report was published.
Here’s how much Twitter’s restructuring is expected to cost originally published by Gigaom, © copyright 2015.
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