Jack Dorsey gives a third of this Twitter stock back to employees

Dorsey just announced Twitter is laying off 8% of its workforce – over 300 people. That’s about $200 million.

If they were given out equally, each staff member would reportedly receive 55 thousand dollars (£36,000).

In spite of Twitter, Inc.’s earlier decision to remove Dorsey from the CEO position, the board voted to bring him back as the permanent CEO replacing Dick Costolo.

USA TODAY reporters and guests Justin Kan and Deldelp Medina discuss the steep challenge facing the Twitter co-founder in this week’s Tech Deep Dive podcast, as well as the impact of Facebook’s expanded search function; the intense fighting in San Francisco over Airbnb; and why it’s no surprise to a few that Amazon’s cloud services is a big deal for the company’s profits. The move by Dorsey to offload a part of his stockholding in Twitter to employees comes after he recently announced staff layoffs.

Dorsey’s remaining stake will be worth about $460 million, based on Twitter’s current market value.

The company will announce third-quarter earnings next week on October 27. “Twitter will go to great lengths to take care of each individual by providing generous exit packages and help finding a new job”. The cuts will come mostly from Product and Engineering, according to Dorsey.

Twitter did not comment further on the move.

Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, has said on Twitter today that he will give away one third of his shares to Twitter employees.

Dorsey is also serving as CEO of Square, a payment processing company that is preparing to price its IPO. The other holders of large amounts of Twitter stock include company co-founder Evan Williams, who has a 6.8 percent stake, and Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who holds more than 5 percent.