Twitter has just announced plans to lay off 366 employees which would account for roughly 8% of its global workforce. The move comes on the coattails of Jack Dorsey's appointment as the company's permanent CEO. Tech blog re/code says that decisions like this were a big part of why he got the job.
Made some tough but necessary decisions that enable Twitter to move with greater focus and reinvest in our growth. https://t.co/BWd7EiGAF2
— Jack (@jack) October 13, 2015
The 38 year-old Dorsey's biggest challenge is spurring growth at the social media giant. TechCrunch reports that the service has been stuck on 316 million active users. The figure, while undoubtedly impressive, means little to investors looking for growing businesses.
In his letter to the company, which was published by The Wall Street Journal's Yoree Koh, Dorsey explained the reasoning behind the tough decision.
The roadmap is also a plan to change how we work, and what we need to do that work. Product and Engineering are going to make the most significant structural changes to reflect our plan ahead. We feel strongly that Engineering will move much faster with a smaller and nimbler team, while remaining the biggest percentage of our workforce. And the rest of the organization will be streamlined in parallel.
Company shares are now up 1.74 percent following the news.
Moments, the first of Twitter's big new features under Dorsey's reign, was released last week. The new addition is the company's stab at news curation, featuring a magazine-like format of the day's top stories. The letter mentioned further experiences in the pipeline.
The roadmap is focused on the experiences which will have the greatest impact. We launched the first of these experiences last week with Moments, a great beginning, and a bold peek into the future of how people will see what's going on in the world.
