Elon Musk on Twitter's 80% Staff Reduction

What percentage of your staff did you fire at Twitter?

One of the great business stories of the year.

I think we're about, we're about, uh, 20% of, uh, the original size, uh.

So 80% left. Uh, yes. So- Uh, uh, and a lot of people voluntarily chose- Sure, sure. But, but it's 80% are gone from the day you took over.

That's correct, yes. So how do you run the company with only 20% of the staff?

Uh, it turns out, uh, you don't need, uh, th- all that many people to run Twitter.

But 80%? That's a lot. Um, yes. Uh, of it, I mean, if you're, if you're not trying to run some sort of, uh, glorified activist organization, uh, w- with, with, uh, and, and you're not- care that much about censorship, then, uh, you can really let go of a lot of people, it turns out.

How many others, without naming names, but how many-- I had dinner with somebody who runs a big company recently. He said, "I'm really inspired by Elon." And I said, "Do-- The free speech stuff?" He goes, "No." "The firing the staff stuff."

Yeah. Um, how many how many other CEOs have come to you, um, to talk about this?

I, I spend a lot of time at work, uh, so it's not like I'm ha- meeting with lots of people. They see what I, what actions I've taken.

Um, and, um... But I, I think we just had a situation at Twitter where it was, uh, absurdly overstaffed, you know? So it wasn't, uh, you know, like, you look and say, like, "What does it really take to operate Twitter?" Um,

you know, and most of what we're talking about here is a g- a group text, uh, service at scale. Um- Like, uh, how many people are really needed for that, you know?

Um, and if you look at the, say, like, uh, what has been the product development, uh, over time with Twitter?

And you, like, so, like, you know, years versus product improvements, and it's, like, a pretty flat line. So what are they doing, you know?

Uh, it took a year to add an edit button that doesn't work most of the time.

I mean, this is-- I feel like there's a comedy situation here, you know?

Um, you're not making cars, you know? Uh, it's very difficult to make cars, um, or get rockets to orbit.

So, um, you know, the, the, the real question is, like, how did it get so absurdly overstaffed? Uh, this is insane. Um, so anyway, that's-- And it's clearly working.

Um, in fact, I think it's working better than ever.

It's about-- W- we, we've increased the, uh, responsiveness of the system by, in some cases, over 80%.

We're trying to make, make Twitter the most trusted place on the internet, the least untrustworthy place on the internet.

I don't think anyone should trust the internet, but, but maybe we can make Twitter the least untrustworthy. Like I said, try to get, uh, the truth to the people, um, as, as best we can.