In October 2022, Elon Musk took over as the CEO of Twitter after the company was bought by his other firm, Square. Since then, he has been restructuring the company, and has carried out multiple rounds of layoffs.
In a recent interview on Twitter Spaces with the BBC, Musk revealed that he has fired over 80 per cent of the entire workforce of Twitter so far, leaving only around 1,500 of the approximately 8,000 employees who were working for the company when he took over.
Musk admitted that terminating a large number of employees was a challenging and unpleasant experience. He added that it can be painful for both the employer and the employees. Furthermore, he disclosed that he did not dismiss all of them in person due to the impracticality of holding face-to-face conversations with such a large group.
Despite the challenges of restructuring the company, Musk claimed that things are going “reasonably well” and that his time at Twitter has been “quite a rollercoaster”.
However, in a surprising statement, Musk claimed that Twitter is not even worth half of what he paid for it, which was $44 billion. Despite this, he has stated that he has no intention of selling the company, even if someone offers him the full amount that he paid for it. He later clarified that he would only sell it if the purchaser would commit to telling the ‘truth’ in the same way that he does.
