Twitter cuts as much as 8% of its work force

Twitter will lay off up to one in 12 employees as it streamlines its product roadmap, new CEO Jack Dorsey told his workforce this morning. Twitter has struggled with bloat in the groups, resulting in overlapping tasks and goals, which created a culture of indecision and made it harder for the company to move quickly, former employees have said.

A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) shows that the Twitter board approved a move to cut the jobs on Monday. “We do so with a more purpose-built team, which we’ll continue to build strength into over time, as we are now enabled to reinvest in our most impactful priorities”. The rest of the company will be streamlined in parallel, he said. Twitter said it expects to recognize most of the pre-tax restructuring charges in the fourth quarter.

The executive added that they will go to great lengths to take care of each outgoing employee by providing generous severance packages and helping them to find a new job.

Dorsey held this role while remaining the chief executive of electronic payments firm Square, of which he is the founder. Most of those will come from the company’s product and engineering teams.

“This isn’t easy. But it is right”, Dorsey said.

He now faces a tough challenge ahead with the site running at a $300 million loss and user growth stagnating. The restructuring will cost Twitter between $5 million and $15 million. The company had 316 million monthly active users as of June. Those in Twitter’s engineering department make up the majority of individuals affected by the cost cutting measure.

Twitter recently announced Moments, a feature starting in the United States which aggregates tweets into news “stories” essentially allowing a user to get an up-to-date view of what’s going on in the world through tweets, original news writing and video content.