Twitter Hasn't Been Paying Office Rent For Weeks, Mulls Not Paying Severance To Laid-Off Employees

Twitter witnessed a chaotic takeover by tech billionaire Elon Musk and now, the new Twitter chief is using radical cost-cutting measures at the company.

Twitter witnessed a chaotic takeover by tech billionaire Elon Musk and now, the new Twitter chief is using radical cost-cutting measures at the company. Twitter has not been paying rent on its office buildings, including its San Francisco headquarters and Musk has told workers not to pay vendors. The company is also mulling over not paying severance fees at all to laid-off staffers, says a report by The New York Times.

What is included in Twitter's cost-cutting bid? 

The Musk-owned company, in a bid to cut costs, has not paid rent for its San Francisco headquarters or any of its global offices for weeks, three people close to the company were quoted as saying by The New York Times. The micro-blogging company has also refused to pay a $197,725 bill for private charter flights made the week of Musk’s takeover, according to a copy of a lawsuit filed in New Hampshire District Court, the report added.

Twitter has received complaints from real estate firms like Shorenstein, which owns Twitter’s San Francisco buildings, in the wake of not paying rent for the office.

The aggressive moves signal that Musk is still slashing expenditures and is bending or breaking the company's previous agreements to make his mark. His reign has been characterised by chaos, a series of resignations and layoffs, reversals of the platform’s previous suspensions and rules, and capricious decisions that have driven away advertisers, The New York Times report noted.

Twitter starts selling kitchen appliances, office furniture and more in auction 

To recall, earlier last week, Twitter announced selling kitchen appliances, office furniture and other surplus office assets in an auction. This came after Musk had revealed that Twitter spends $13 million a year on food service at its San Francisco headquarters. Last month, Musk tweeted that staff lunches at Twitter HQ were costing more than $400 per meal.

Earlier this month, the micro-blogging platform started giving generous incentives to brands, in a bid to lure advertisers it lost after the chaotic takeover by Musk. Big brands such as luxury automakers Audi and Ford, tech behemoths HP and Dell, Facebook parent Meta Coca-Cola, Verizon, AT&T, Wells Fargo, American Express and Chanel among other advertisers have either pulled ads from Twitter or have publicly confirmed they are stopping ads from the social media platform, said a report by Media Matters For America.

In the past few weeks, 50 of the top 100 Twitter advertisers have either announced or stopped advertising on Twitter. These advertisers have accounted for nearly $2 billion in spending on the platform since 2020, and over $750 million in advertising in 2022 alone.