Twilio has revealed that George Clooney and his wife will be speaking at its customer and developer conference in November.
The news arrived less than two weeks after it had announced that 11% of its staff were being laid off in order to increase profitability.
Some of Twilio’s former staff were vocal about their upset with Twilio’s decision to pay the costly speaker fees for George Clooney while explaining the recent layoffs as necessary budget cuts.
Co-Founder and CEO of Twlio, Jeff Lawson, said: “I’m not going to sugar-coat things. A layoff is the last thing we want to do, but I believe it’s wise and necessary.
“Twilio has grown at an astonishing rate over the past couple of years. It was too fast and without enough focus on our most important company priorities.
“I take responsibility for those decisions, as well as the difficult decision to do this layoff.”
Talia Luna Fischer had recently been promoted to Growth Account Executive before being laid off.
While Fischer expressed gratitude for the time she spent at Twilio, she was not happy about the company’s decision to hire George Clooney for its upcoming conference.
On Twilio’s LinkedIn post, Fischer said:
“So me and over 900 Twilions just lost our livelihoods because it was the “wise and responsible” thing to do, but then booking a Hollywood celebrity and his wife to speak, which can’t have been cheap, is good business?”.
In making its decision, Twilio said company officials had examined which roles were aligned with its ‘four priorities’.
The four priorities at Twilio are “We are Leaders”, “We are Owners”, “We are Curious”, and “We are Positrons”.
Fisher commented on her own post with a photo from the company website defining being an “Owner”, with “Have a point of view” and “Be frugal” highlighted, pointing to the company’s apparent hypocrisy.
Another commented that the post was “incredibly tone deaf and offensive”.
Talia has been searching for job opportunities since being made redundant.
The company has agreed to pay the workers it has laid off three months wages, plus a week’s wage on top of that for every year worked at the company.
Lawson added: “As you all know, we are committed to becoming an Anti-Racist/Anti-Oppression company.
“Layoffs like this can have a more pronounced impact on marginalized communities, so we were particularly focused on ensuring our layoffs – while a business necessity today – were carried out through an Anti-Racist/Anti-Oppression lens.
“I am deeply sorry to see you all leave Twilio. You have all been part of building our company. You’ve been our teammates, partners, and friends. I’m grateful for your contributions to our customers and our business. And we owe it to you to help as much as we can.”
Twilio has said it expects to lose between $70 million and $90 million in the restructuring of the company.
UC Today has reached out to both Twilio and Fischer for further comments.
In May this year, Twilio appeared optimistic about its financial outlook and spoke of the potential in two-way communications.
Last year, Twilio was one of the companies to be leading on growth in the global CPaaS market.
