Twitter is abruptly cutting off a large number of contract workers

A large number of Twitter contract workers discovered they were abruptly terminated this weekend after they lost access to Slack and other work systems, according to internal communications shared with CNBC by full-time Twitter employees.

An estimated 4,400 of its 5,500 contract workers have been laid off, According to Platformer, which first reported the cuts. CNBC has not confirmed the total number.

Some of Twitter’s contract workers were working abroad in India, among other locations. The full-time employees, who asked not to be named because they are not authorized to speak on Twitter’s behalf, said they had no internal notice before giving up contractors they were working with.

According to those employees, Twitter has fired all of its internal communications team. They also made bitter jokes that the media covering the company now fills the role of internal communications.

The contractor’s job cuts will mark the latest cutback for the social media platform, which has already laid off nearly half of its employees after Elon Musk’s takeover of the company on Oct. 28.

Musk and Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey Sorry last week To grow the company “very quickly,” a day after the social media company laid off workers. Dorsey personally sought Musk’s takeover of his company in a controversial leveraged purchase and paid his own shares to the new holding company.

As of June 30, 2013, shortly before Twitter went public, it had approximately 2,000 employees, according to documents filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. By the end of last year, the company reported that it had grown to about 7,500 full-time employees.

Musk addressed the layoffs in a tweet on November 4, writing: “In terms of downgrading Twitter, unfortunately there is no choice when the company loses more than $4 million a day. Everyone who exits has been offered a 3-month bonus, which is 50% More than what is legally required.”

Since taking over, Musk has told the rest of Twitter employees that They sold billions of dollars in stock in Tesla, his electric car company, in order to “save” Twitter. It’s not clear if Musk will continue to sell Tesla shares to pay off Twitter’s debt.

He also told Twitter employees that bankruptcy is not out of the question for the social media business amid the economic downturn, and because advertisers have fled or halted spending on the platform during its hard takeover.