During his first address to Twitter employees, Elon Musk said he hopes to reach one billion daily users and suggested that layoffs would happen if his $44billion offer to purchase the company goes through.
In a company-wide town hall Thursday, Musk told staffers anxious about layoffs that the company ‘needs to get healthy.’
‘Right now, costs exceed revenue,’ Musk said. ‘That’s not a great situation.’
The Tesla CEO, who previously told automotive employees that they should work 40 hours in person or leave, expressed similar sentiments in the Twitter Q&A but said that ‘exceptional’ employees may have more leniency.
‘If someone can only work remotely and they’re exceptional, it wouldn’t make sense to fire them,’ he reportedly said.
Twitter currently allows its employees to work remotely as they desire.
When asked how Twitter employees could earn his trust, Musk stressed his desire for productivity in the workplace, telling staff on the call: ‘If somebody is getting useful things done, that’s great. If they aren’t getting useful things done, then why are they at the company?’
Current Twitter executives have reportedly deflected questions about layoffs in recent weeks, telling employees that Musk had the answers, according to .
While Musk didn’t explicitly say there would be layoffs, many employees were left unnerved by the comments he made.
Following the meeting, which ended around 1pm EST, employees reportedly were not thrilled with the information they had been given, according to , who reported that the majority of reactions in Twitter’s Slack messaging board were negative in nature.
Staff also reportedly sent memes about how to become seen as ‘exceptional,’ following Musk’s commentary that ‘exceptional’ employees would be able to continue working remotely and would not have to worry about layoffs.
During the meeting, Musk noted several goals he has for the company, including reaching one billion daily users and ‘advancing civilization and consciousness.’
He also said he would be interested in Twitter becoming similar to WeChat, a Chinese social media, messaging and payments app.
‘You can basically live on WeChat,’ Musk said.
When asked about policing harmful content, Musk reiterated his views that people should be able to voice their views, even if they are ‘extreme,’ so long as they don’t break the law. It’s unclear what he would do, if anything, to stop the spread of misinformation.
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