Elon Musk Apparently: About 7,500 people work at Twitter; according to reports, 75% can expect to be fired. Elon Musk is buying the company, and he has been telling potential investors that he plans to fire many people to cut costs.
Musk has until October 28 to finish the deal to buy Twitter. As a sign that the value is moving forward, Twitter put a hold on the equity awards of its employees.
Job cuts were already planned. Before Musk’s offer, Twitter’s management had designed to cut almost a quarter of the staff, which would have saved $800 million. The former head of Twitter’s spam and health metrics told The Post that Musk’s planned cuts, which are more extensive, are “unimaginable.” Users would probably find out immediately since Twitter will likely get hacked more. Musk wants to use stack ranking, which was famously stopped at Microsoft in 2013 because it led to bad culture, to reduce the number of employees.
Musk has said that he is “obviously overpaying” for Twitter, and a general partner at one of the firms involved in the deal told Business Insider, “To be honest, we’re all trying to get out of it.” The Post says Musk told investors that the goal is to double revenue in three years, but he didn’t say how that would happen.
Many big names in private equity, like T. Rowe Price, TPG, and Warburg Pincus, have turned down the deal. Reid Hoffman, who was in the PayPal Mafia and later started LinkedIn, didn’t invest, but he did connect Musk with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. The Post says that Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm, Founders Fund, which is his most famous business, also failed.
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