The Twitter saga continues and is almost too much to keep up with. But, if you were on the site yesterday, you would’ve seen “#RIPTwitter” trending as people speculated that the site could no longer function after Musk’s mass layoffs.
After cutting roughly half the company’s 7,500-person workforce since taking over, Elon Musk issued an ultimatum to the remaining employees. Either sign up to work for the hardcore “Twitter 2.0” or leave. He gave employees until Thursday at 5 pm to make their choice, and initial reports suggested several hundred folks decided to go.
However, current estimates are that roughly 1,200 full-time employees resigned on Thursday, which leaves about 1,700 remaining.
A 75% decrease in headcount and Musk’s erratic management approach left many Twitter users concerned about whether the platform could continue in its current state. With that said, we all woke up this morning, and the site was still active. So it looks like doomsday will have to wait…
But besides the juicy headlines the Twitter situation generates, the overall situation is important for more than just Musk-related reasons.
Some proponents of his approach say that tech companies today have too many employees and should operate much leaner. The typical example thrown around is that Craiglist only has 50 employees (or something like that). So, if Elon does manage to pull this transformation off, that will likely prompt investors to question other companies’ headcount levels/approaches.
In the meantime, we’ll all sit back and watch this situation unfold on none other than…Twitter.