The billionaire, Tesla and SpaceX owner suggests that big tech companies have too much headcount and could make significant cuts without hurting productivity. During an interview at The Wall Street Journal CEO Council, Musk cited the example of Twitter after he took over the social media site last year and began mass layoffs.
After taking over Twitter, Musk started cutting jobs, removing top executives, and shutting down entire departments to cut costs and make the company profitable. He told the Journal he had to do that because “there were a lot of people that didn’t seem to have a lot of value.” “I think there is the possibility for significant cuts at other companies without really affecting their productivity, increasing it,” he said.
During the interview, Musk also discussed his plans for Twitter and said he’s gung ho about increasing the site’s functionality. For example, he mentioned that he wants Twitter to support longer-form video, which is more like television programming than the short tweets currently popular on the platform. He’s also adding a new feature to let people see who is following them on the site.
Twitter has been criticized for not putting enough focus on user safety and for not doing enough to combat hate speech and misinformation. As a result, the White House has asked Twitter to explain how it’s safeguarding users’ online data. In addition, the Federal Trade Commission has weighed in with concerns that Twitter is violating a consent decree it signed with the agency in 2011.
In his interview with the Journal, Musk described some difficulties he’s had while trying to turn around Twitter. He explained that the company is more agile than he’d like and that getting employees to change their ways has been challenging. He said he has “tried to bring more discipline to the company” and is making the staff focus on software engineering, server operations, and design.
As for the upcoming mass layoffs, he said there was no choice when the company lost $4 million a day. He also criticized activists for pressuring advertisers to pull their ads from the platform.
Earlier this week, Twitter began to block some employees’ access to email and Slack, which led some to suspect they had been laid off. The company hasn’t officially confirmed any layoffs. Still, rumors have swirled that dozens of software engineers involved in the project to overhaul Twitter’s internal systems are being let go.
According to the Journal, those left on Twitter are being asked to work many more hours than they used to. One product manager-employee says she has been working from home from 7 am to 11 pm every night since October and has not had time to do anything outside of work. She says she feels like the situation negatively impacts her mental health.
