What’s Going on With Elon Musk at Twitter?

Controversial, billionaire playboy, the world’s richest man, and now solo Twitter executive—Elon Musk is nothing if not eccentric. A few days after completing his extravagant buyout of Twitter Inc., Musk has been making global waves.

To say that things have been interesting would be an understatement. The first thing Elon Musk did was dissolve Twitter’s board and fire top executives. And, amid grand promises of promoting free speech, the billionaire has now rolled up his sleeves to turn Twitter upside down.

What the heck is going on with the king of Twitter, Tesla, SpaceX, and the Boring Company? Is there a method to his madness, or is he just winging it and hoping it works?

You’re Fired! Musk’s Whirlwind Approach

In addition to the board and top executives, Musk has fired over 3,700 Twitter employees. According to him, the company is losing $4m a day. To save the company, he intends to stem the bleeding of funds and even slash $1B from the company’s infrastructure costs.

On the Friday of 4th November, Musk fired 50% of the tech giant’s employees via email, including many critical engineering and content moderation teams. In a later meeting, Musk said that he “had no choice.”

Those who survived the layoffs were hardly better off, being required to work 12 hours a day with some sleeping in office couches to meet Musk’s grueling deadlines. And that’s despite Musk wanting to revamp Twitter’s policies and bring in new features on a tight timeline.

Is Musk trying to realize his grand vision with less than half the workforce? There has been an interesting turn of events as he later asked some of the employees he fired to “please come back” because they’re essential to the company and the new features he’s working on.

It goes to show how reckless Musk has been in his first few weeks at the helm of what is one of the world’s most influential social media platforms. Not that he’s shying away from controversy and Twitter wars.