Just a few months ago Elon Musk fired employees from Twitter left, right and center. Thousands of employees were issued the pink slips. Without even serving the notice period, they were shown the door. But now the tech billionaire and outgoing CEO of the top microblogging platform regrets his mass layoff decision.
In an interview with CNBC, Musk admitted that he had acted in haste when he fired about 6,000 employees at Twitter shortly after acquiring the social media platform for $44 billion in October 2022.
Musk received severe criticism across the world for removing employees soon after taking over the office. In the interview, musk revealed that Twitter was bleeding cash and losing users. It was $3 billion negative in cash flow. This made him make drastic changes in the company’s policies.
Not only did he lay off 6,000 employees, but he also increased the working hours and imposed stricter deadlines. He even issued warnings to the remaining 1,500 employees to adhere to his work practices. This led to further resignations. Musk admitted, “In desperate times, desperate measures are called for… Unfortunately, when you do it quickly, some innocent people may be affected.” In light of this, Twitter is now planning to rehire some of the employees who were laid off, indicating a course correction.
Musk also showed confidence in newly appointed CEO Linda Yaccarino. He mentioned that Linda would oversee the company’s operations while he focused on creating innovative products.
Recognizing Twitter’s heavy reliance on advertising revenue, Musk highlighted Yaccarino’s expertise in this field, emphasizing that his own skills and interests primarily revolve around technology.
Since the acquisition in October 2022, Musk stated that Twitter’s ad revenue has significantly declined, by up to 50 percent. As a result, he revised the company’s valuation to $20 billion, a significant decrease from the initial $44 billion price that he had to cough up at the time of acquisition.
Twitter has always been in the news since the time Elon Musk decided to take over the platform. The latest was about Musk quitting as CEO and appointing Yaccarino as CEO after the roller-coaster ride of him as the CEO of the firm. For unversed Linda formerly worked with NBCUniversal.
She will work under Elon Musk and be tasked with bringing advertisers back to Twitter. However, Musk also plans on turning the platform into ‘X,’ the everything super app, which will entail a lot of changes coming to Twitter.
