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Last month, Elon Musk’s trusted lieutenant, from a top-secret “war room” at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, went through a list of employees and showed how much the social media company was costing them.
Then the billionaire owner’s “transition team,” led by Steve Davis, who heads the bowling company owned by Mr. Musk, began calling staff. Some were asked to justify their role. Others recommend which colleague to keep.
These deliberations signaled Musk’s latest layoff on Twitter, as part of his effort to get the loss-making company back to financial health and combat advertiser drain and a cumbersome debt-repayment bill.
The February cuts cut more than 200 employees, but they came after Musk had already laid off half of its 7,500 employees after it bought Twitter in October, so many of them were cut. It was broader and deeper than we expected. The move wiped out much of the business development and product teams, leaving Twitter leaner and more volatile.
The billionaire intends to keep Twitter’s finances under control with his inner circle, this explanation comes from current and former Twitter staff, people who know Musk’s thoughts, and his public statements and investments on Twitter. Based on interviews with the house.
Musk, Twitter, and most members of the transition team did not respond to requests for comment.
Formed in November, the transition team often refuses to pay many of Twitter’s vendors, landlords and partners immediately in hopes of keeping costs down, sometimes frustrating and freezing clients. This led to a standoff.
The move comes as Twitter plans to roll out a new stock compensation package for its employees in late March, according to two people familiar with the situation. For tax purposes, Twitter is in the process of calculating a new valuation to determine the value of its common stock in the business, which will determine the value of employee stock options, the people said. rice field. One of them, she said, said the valuation was probably much lower than his $44 billion purchase price.
At an investor conference hosted by Morgan Stanley last week, Musk said he had cut non-debt spending to $1.5 billion from $4.5 billion it would have incurred in 2023, and Twitter turned positive within a second. It added that it could reach a cash flow of quarter.
