Elon Musk Doesn’t Rule Out Twitter Layoffs in Town Hall With Employees
variety.comTodd Spangler NY Digital EditorAmid Elon Musk’s pending $44 billion takeover of Twitter — which still isn’t guaranteed — the mega-billionaire fielded questions from the social network’s staffers Thursday.A top-of-mind question for Twitter employees: Will there be layoffs if he completes the deal?
Musk did not explicitly say one way or the other, but he said, that the company “needs to get healthy” and that “Anyone who is a significant contributor should have nothing to worry about,” Bloomberg reported.He also said, “Right now costs exceed revenue.
That’s not a great situation,” per a report by the Verge. Twitter reported Q1 revenue of $1.20 billion, up 16% year-over-year, and net income of $513 million.
Musk has said he wants to make Twitter adhere to principles of “free speech.” Asked about his thinking on the topic, Musk said users should be allowed to say “pretty outrageous things” but that is different from giving tweets “freedom of reach,” according to a Wall Street Journal account.As for why Musk — a Twitter power user who is fond of jokes and memes — likes the service, he responded, “Some people use their hair to express themselves, I use Twitter,” according to a now-deleted tweet from Nola Weinstein, Twitter’s global head of brand experiences and engagement.The key points from Musk during the meeting, according to Weinstein in another now-deleted post, were that the “Goal is to make Twitter so compelling you cant live without it & everyone wants to use it”; “Bias is strongly to working in person”; and “If there are 2 sides to an issue it’s important to represent multiple opinions.
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