Elon Musk is looking to rehire Twitter workers who can help with video and the Twitter Blue subscription service after laying off thousands last week

Under new CEO Elon Musk, leaders at Twitter have, in a week’s time, gone from compiling lists of who they think should be laid off to compiling lists of laid off workers that they would like to bring back.

Over the weekend, managers and directors at Twitter who survived the mass layoffs late last week were informed they “had the opportunity” to ask people who lost their jobs “if they will come back” to work at the company, according to internal messages seen by Insider. Insider, along with The newsletter Platformer reported on Sunday that people were being asked to come back to work.

Twitter is seeking workers in a few specific areas, according to current and former employees. All of the people Insider spoke with asked to remain anonymous talking about internal company matters.

Twitter is focusing, in part, on re-recruiting employees in media engineering, such as video uploading features, although workers have been told they can effectively “nominate” anyone they think should return, two people familiar said, confirming messages seen by Insider. Engineers to work on Apple and Google’s Android integrations are also being asked back, the people said. They’re being asked back to help with the relaunch of Twitter Blue, Musk’s subscription offering for Twitter that will allow people to pay to be “verified” on the platform.

Media engineering is a core organization at Twitter, and Musk had previously tweeted about wanting longer videos to be uploaded to Twitter. Twitter is also looking to rehire the real-time media infrastructure team, which deals with live video and Twitter Spaces, and the team for knowledge graph integration tags, which tags Twitter content internally, including content that should not appear next to advertising. Many advertisers have paused spending on Twitter as they wait and see how the platform changes under Musk.

Several dozen people who were laid off have been asked back so far, with very few expressing interest, current and former employees said. One current employee who saw their team slashed by half said out of five people asked to come back, “only one expressed any interest.”

Even if laid off employees agree to return, Musk still isn’t making it easy, according to additional messages seen by Insider. For someone to return to Twitter, a current employee must confirm that person is interested and “argue why they are critical and convince your new lead.”

If that gets approved, then the formerly laid-off person would have access to their work computer and tools restored. Thousands of Twitter employees found out they had been let go by Musk on Thursday night when they lost access to their work tools. 

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment as of press time.

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