Twitter announced today, Oct 13, that it was laying off some of its work force, to cut costs while it tries to find ways to attract new users.
The cuts are one of the first major moves by Jack Dorsey, the Twitter co-founder who was named chief executive of the social media company last week. The social network has announced that it’s axing up to 336 jobs, or about 8 percent of its total headcount.
Dorsey argues that the move is necessary for a “streamlined” roadmap where Twitter focuses on fewer but bigger features, such as Moments. Most of the cuts will affect the engineering division, he says, since the company believes that a “smaller and nimbler” coding group would be more effective.
Twitter also said that revenue and adjusted profit for the third quarter would be at or above its previous forecasts. The high end of the company’s previous forecast predicted revenue of $560 million and adjusted earnings of $115 million.
Twitter said it would provide “generous” exit packages to those who lose their jobs. It intends to take a pretax charge of $5 million to $15 million in the fourth quarter in connection with the layoffs.