- A fired Twitter engineer told CNN they faced a “surge of rejection” for job applications.
- The former Twitter employee is among those seeking redress after being fired when Elon Musk took office.
- Twitter is facing complaints about the size of severance packages for those who have been laid off in recent months.
Ex-Twitter employees struggle to land in ‘hot trash can’ the job market Since Elon Musk drove them awayaccording to former Twitter engineer Justine De Caires.
“The market is hot right now,” De Caires said. told CNN. They are among hundreds of former Twitter employees who have filed a legal challenge against severance packages offered to fired staff members.
De Caires told CNN the bleak tech job market has them looking at radically different career options.
“I sat down earlier this week after a wave of rejections and thought, maybe I should become a firefighter or something…because tech jobs just don’t happen,” they wrote. declared.
De Caires was among a group of named plaintiffs who sued Twitter last year, telling a California federal court that severance packages offered under Musk’s plan were lower than what the company had previously offered.
De Caires and the other employees suing Twitter also said they relied on assurances from Twitter’s previous management that the company’s firing policy would remain the same after Musk takes office, according to an amended complaint that they had filed in December.
Twitter’s pre-Musk severance package included two or more months’ salary, plus other benefits, while under Musk, laid-off employees were only offered one month’s severance package, according to their complaint .
“Twitter employees had been promised that if terminated after the sale of the company, they would be entitled to the same benefits and compensation that employees had previously received,” they said in the complaint. “However, after Musk bought the company, Twitter reneged on that deal.”
Insider did not receive a response to emails sent to Twitter’s press address and Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX addresses on Monday morning.
De Caires and other employees also argued that any pay they received between when they were notified of the layoff and their last official day with the company did not count as severance pay. De Caires, who had worked for Twitter in San Francisco, was told of his dismissal on Nov. 4, but was officially fired from the company on Jan. 4 this year, according to a court filing.
De Caires’ claims have since been moved to arbitrationas they are among former Twitter employees who had signed arbitration agreements while working for Twitter, according to the California federal court order in January.
De Caires lawyer Shannon Liss-Riordan told Insider she now represents a total of more than 1,500 dismissed Twitter employees in individual arbitration cases.
“It would be a lot cheaper for Twitter to just pay employees what they’re owed than to defend against all these cases,” Liss-Riordan said. “We hope Elon realizes this soon, but if not, we look forward to facing him in the courtroom, as well as in arbitration.”
Nearly 124,000 employees have been laid off this year at more than 450 tech companies, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website that records layoffs in the industry. Big tech companies like Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Amazon all reported large-scale layoffs.
Some companies, like Uber, also use tougher performance reviews to kick employees out, though the ride-hailing company previously told Insider that it plans to replace employee roles it cuts into the process.