Within what’s left of the technical teams that keep Twitter running, there’s a new source of unlikely anxiety: the FIFA World Cup.
The soccer competition, which kicks off in Qatar this Sunday, is one of the world’s most watched media events, and like most sporting events of its kind, is expected to bring with it an avalanche of Twitter usage. Every goal, yellow card and save by a goalkeeper often triggers incredible levels of simultaneous tweeting from fans, which even in the best of times can cause cascades of failures leading to extended outages for Twitter, according to current engineers and former company engineers.
But now Twitter is operating with less than half the staff it had a month ago, raising questions about its ability to handle the potential increase next week. Musk instituted deep staff cuts two weeks ago after taking control of the company, and more have left Twitter since then. Musk’s layoffs devastated the team overseeing Twitter’s technical infrastructure, with about 80% of its staff cut, according to employee estimates.
