Firing a bunch of people right after he was named the permanent CEO of Twitter probably wasn’t the best way for Jack Dorsey to start things off, which is why he decided to distribute a third of his Twitter stock to the remaining employees that survived the recent purge. Considering how Dorsey has somewhere around 22 million shares of stock, that means he’s giving Twitter’s employees about $200 million in stock. This announcement comes one week after Dorsey donated around 40 million shares of stock to charity.
Not long after laying off more than 300 employees, Twitter’s chief executive officer Jack Dorsey has gifted the remaining workforce with one-third of his own stock. Dorsey made the announcement in two wee-hour Tweets on Friday, saying he wanted to “reinvest directly in our people.” Twitter shares dropped nearly 0.5% on Thursday, to close at $29.16. That means Dorsey has gifted roughly $198 million worth of shares — 1% of the company — to the employee stock pool. The move comes less than two weeks after Twitter announced it would cut up to 336 employees, or around 8% of its global workforce, to focus on its top products and become more efficient. The job losses largely affected staffers in engineering roles. CEOs giving their own stock to employees isn’t something that happens every day. In a rare instance this summer, HealthStream CEO Bobby Frist gave $1.5 milllion of his personal stock to around 600 employees, media reports said. Wall Street has lost some faith in the social-media company, whose shares are down 18% year-to-date as of Thursday. Earlier this week, Morgan Stanley cut Twitter to its lowest rating, the equivalent of a sell, on concerns about user growth and engagement.