Elon Musk claims that if he had not decided to dramatically reduce Twitter’s employment from its previous 8,000 employees to an estimated 1,500 employees, the company would have been on the verge of bankruptcy.
In a BBC interview on Tuesday night, Mr. Musk made the claim in support of the widespread layoffs that, in an extraordinary turn of events, resulted in many employees losing their jobs not long after he bought the microblogging platform for $44 billion last October.
The owner of Twitter defended the layoffs by saying they were a necessary precaution to prevent Twitter from collapsing, and that without them, the website would have struggled to survive.
“The company’s going to go bankrupt if we don’t cut costs immediately,” Mr Musk said to the British media. “This is not a caring-uncaring situation. It’s like if the whole ship sinks, then nobody’s got a job.”
When asked if he regretted purchasing the platform, Mr Musk responded the acquisition “needed to be done.” He, however, admitted running the company has been extremely painful.
“The pain level of Twitter has been extremely high. This hasn’t been some sort of party,” Mr Musk said.
As part of sweeping changes on the platform, Mr Musk asked organisations to pay a mandatory $1,000 monthly subscription fee to get or retain their verification badges, an option The New York Times blatantly opposed.
