As part of his pitch to raise money to acquire Twitter, Elon Musk apparently “floated” the idea of cutting jobs on Twitter to improve his bottom line, according to one bloomberg report good. “While nothing is set in stone – and Musk did not have access to non-public financials of Twitter at the time – he specifically mentioned job cuts”, the report said. Washington Post reported that Musk discussed building “efficiencies” at the company in talks with bankers, “which could include job cuts.”
There’s still a lot of uncertainty about what Twitter will look like under Musk’s ownership, assuming the $44 billion deal announced on Monday goes as expected. So far, the best indication of what he wants to do with the platform comes from his own words in a press release:
Free speech is the cornerstone of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters important to the future of humanity are debated. I want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating spam bots and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and community of users to unlock it.
But the potential job cuts have not been publicly discussed. Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Given Musk’s many tweets about opening up free speech on the platform — including criticizing past decisions by Twitter that have drawn negative attention to employees — one area where Musk can cut is the company’s policy department. . Musk disbanded the PR department at Tesla, so perhaps Twitter’s communications group could also come under scrutiny.
As for bankers, Musk may have discussed ways to improve the bottom line, but publicly, he has indicated he’s not interested in Twitter for money. “This is no way to make money,” Musk said at TED 2022 on April 14. “My strong instinct is that having a public forum that is most credible and widely inclusive is extremely important for the future of civilization. I don’t care about economics at all.”
Update April 28th, 8:30PM ETAdded Confirmation Washington Post,
