Elon Musk told the BBC in a rare interview late Tuesday that he had laid off around 6,000 staff at Twitter since taking over the company.
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| Image Source - Google | Image by <br><a href=https BBC News |
By Mehran Mazari
Musk was described in the interview as adding that the social networking site now has only 1,500 employees, down from under 8,000 at the time of his acquisition. The layoffs represent nearly 80% of the company's workforce.
It's "not fun at all" and can be "painful," the billionaire CEO told the BBC from Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco.
When he joined the company, the world's second richest man stated that "dramatic action" was required because the company was facing a "$3 billion negative cash flow situation." Twitter (TWTR) now has "four months to live," he estimates.
"This is neither a caring nor an uncaring situation." "It's like, if the whole ship sinks, nobody has a job," Musk explained.
Musk paid $44 billion for Twitter last October.
Elon Musk tells BBC that owning Twitter has been quite painful https://t.co/xye44UiLFF
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) April 12, 2023
He sought to back out of the arrangement after initially agreeing to take over the company in April 2022, citing concerns about the number of bot accounts it had. He has subsequently significantly restructured Twitter, sacking top executives, laying off employees, and instituting new standards governing how user accounts are verified or labelled.
According to him, Twitter is now "roughly" breaking even, and advertisers are returning to the platform.
Musk also promised to change the British broadcaster's designation from "government-funded" to "publicly funded" after the BBC complained.
Over the weekend, the designation was added. The BBC had objected, claiming that it "is, and always has been, independent."
"We are funded by the British public through the license fee," the organization stated at the time.
Musk also commented on the US investigation into TikTok, noting that while he did not use the Chinese-owned app, he was normally "against banning things."
"I mean, it would help Twitter, I suppose, if TikTok was banned, because then people would spend more time on Twitter and less time on TikTok," he pondered.
"However, even though that would benefit Twitter, I am generally opposed to banning things."
During the interview, Musk also joked that he was "no longer the CEO of Twitter" and had been replaced by his personal dog, a Shiba Inu named Floki.
Here's what Elon Musk has to say about the BBC https://t.co/tHbbK3UQyx
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) April 12, 2023
