Social media giant Twitter planning hundreds of job cuts

Twitter is planning to axe up to 300 jobs, an announcement about which is expected as early as this week. The job cut might affect 8% of its workforce, although the number could change.

The announcement about the layoff is expected before the company releases its third quarter earnings on Thursday (27 October), people familiar with the plan told Bloomberg.

Last year around the same time the company resorted to similar job cuts. A little more than a week after Jack Dorsey took over as the chief executive officer, the company laid off 336 employees. The cuts were reportedly part of the company's overall plan to focus on its main products and drive efficiencies throughout Twitter.

In a letter to employees with the subject line "A more focused Twitter" Dorsey wrote: "We are moving forward with a restructuring of our workforce so we can put our company on a stronger path to grow. Emails like this are usually riddled with corporate speak so I'm going to give it to you straight."

"So we have made an extremely tough decision: we plan to part ways with up to 336 people from across the company. We are doing this with the utmost respect for each and every person. Twitter will go to great lengths to take care of each individual by providing generous exit packages and help finding a new job," he noted.

It recently explored a sale but the companies interested in buying Twitter backed out from the bidding process. They included Salesforce, Walt Disney and Alphabet.

Twitter's losses along with a 40% share fall in just over a year have made it difficult for the company to pay its engineers. This in turn made it difficult for Twitter to compete with rivals such as Google and Facebook in terms of talent. The company had 3,860 employees globally as of June.