Twitter just laid off 336 workers

Jack Dorsey’s new tenure as Twitter’s CEO is off to quite a start: the company is cutting almost a tenth of its workforce.

The Associated Press reports that the social media company announced 336 layoffs today, representing 8% of Twitter’s 4,100 person staff. Most of the layoffs will affect the engineering team, according to a filing.

The layoffs follow Twitter co-founder Dorsey’s return as permanent CEO, which was announced last Monday. Dorsey was already serving as interim CEO following Dick Costolo’s departure back in June.

Dorsey announced the layoffs in a memo (also filed with the SEC) sent out this morning with the subject line “A more focused Twitter.” The gist seems to be that Twitter’s product and engineering teams will bear the brunt of the layoffs:

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.

The memo also emphasizes the “great lengths” Twitter intends to go to “to take care of each individual by providing generous exit packages and help finding a new job.” In terms of money, that’ll entail an estimated “$10 million-$20 million in severance costs and $5 million-$15 million in restructuring charges,” according to Reuters.

Twitter may be using the layoffs to try to stanch what the AP describes as “an uninterrupted cycle of financial losses.” The social network has struggled to attract new users, and shares of the company stock are down almost 20% on the year.

Ethan Chiel is a reporter for Fusion, writing mostly about the internet and technology. You can (and should) email him at [email protected]