Former Twitter engineer compares company's current state to Looney Tunes character Wile E. Coyote running off a cliff

Elon Musk now owns Twitter. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

• Twitter may have functionality issues after 1,200 employees resigned Thursday, NYT reported.
• After resignations and layoffs following Elon Musk's acquisition, roughly 2,500 of 7,500 employees remain.
• One former engineer described the company like Wile E. Coyote running off a cliff.

The future functionality of Twitter may be at risk after 1,200 employees resigned Thursday, The New York Times reported, with one former engineer saying the company is as wildly chaotic as an episode of Looney Tunes. 

Since Elon Musk acquired the social media platform for $44 billion at the end of October, the company has made sweeping cuts to its workforce of 7,500 employees. Making good on his promise to investors to cut staffing by 75%, Musk initiated layoffs immediately following the completion of the deal. In the days since, more than 3,800 jobs have been cut. On Thursday, approximately 1,200 more employees resigned.

One former engineer told The New York Times the company's current situation is similar to when the Looney Tunes character Wile E. Coyote runs off a cliff — continuing on in midair for a moment and plunging like a rock once he looks down.

The current skeleton crew staff appears to be to blame for more frequent technical glitches on the platform, including staff being locked out of the company's official Twitter account and the malfunctioning of two-factor authentication after Musk said he was ridding the site of "bloatware." Musk has also rolled out and then repealed several features since his multi-billion dollar purchase, such as the $8 Twitter Blue subscription that offered blue-check "verification" that was available to users for less than a week before being suspended.

Musk and representatives for Twitter did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.