Elon Musk has started to cut employees at Twitter Inc.

People who identified themselves as Twitter employees were seen leaving the company’s San Francisco headquarters carrying boxes of belongings. Internally, Slack channels lit up with suspicion that the departing people were enacting a hoax, and were not in fact laid off, people familiar with the matter said. 

Still, Musk has been cutting -- and started right after the deal closed Thursday with several executives, including the chief executive officer and chief financial officer, people familiar with the matter have said. 

The company has scheduled an employee meeting for next Wednesday, but some staff did not receive invitations, according to one of the people familiar with the matter.

Twitter didn’t respond to a request for comment.