Mark Zuckerberg praises Elon Musk for laying off 6,000 Twitter employees; here’s why
Mark Zuckerberg said that what Elon Musk did with Twitter was not a change. Mark Zuckerberg thinks that what Elon Musk did made other companies in Silicon Valley think about how they do things. Elon Musk got rid of than 6,000 jobs after he bought Twitter in 2022. Twitter had 8,000 people working for them at that time. After that the number of people working at Twitter went down to about 1,500 people in a few months. Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are two people in the tech world and what they do affects Twitter and other companies. Elon Musk made changes at Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg has thoughts, about what Elon Musk did. This made a lot of people talk about it. Some people did not think Twitter could still work with few people. Elon Musk and what he did at Twitter is still being discussed. Twitter and Elon Musk made changes that affected a lot of people.
Zuckerberg claims Musk made Twitter more technical by laying off thousands of employees
Rather than focusing solely on the scale of the layoffs, Zuckerberg highlighted the organisational changes underpinning Musk’s approach. He noted that Musk’s effort to reduce hierarchical layers and bring engineers closer to decision-making was something many companies could learn from.
“I think Elon led an effort from the start to make Twitter much leaner and more efficient,” Zuckerberg said during the podcast. “You might agree or disagree with all the specific tactics… but many of the specific principles he pushed—basically trying to make the organisation more technical, reducing the distance between the company’s engineers and himself, or having fewer layers of management—I think were positive changes overall.”
The Meta CEO noted that Musk’s actions encouraged other founders to take a closer look at their own organisations and question whether they had unnecessary layers of management. “I also think it was probably good for the industry that he made those changes, because I get the impression there were many other people who thought they were the right moves but perhaps didn’t dare to carry them out,” he added.
Zuckerberg also clarified that he was not claiming every decision made at Twitter was correct. He pointed out that outsiders could not fully grasp the challenges involved in managing the platform or determine whether the cuts had been excessive.
“It’s very hard to tell from the outside. Did he cut too much? Not enough? I don’t think it’s my place to weigh in on that,” Zuckerberg said.
A different approach from Meta’s own layoffs
These comments have gained significance because Meta subsequently went through its own large-scale restructuring phase.
When Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta was letting a lot of people go in 2022 he said that Meta had grown too fast during the pandemic. At first Meta got rid of 11,000 jobs. On Meta ended up cutting more, than 20,000 jobs at Meta.
“I got it wrong, and I take responsibility for that,” Zuckerberg told employees at the time. In 2023, Zuckerberg described the restructuring as part of Meta’s “Year of Efficiency,” focusing on cutting costs and streamlining operations. This strategy has continued, with Meta trimming expenses in certain areas while ramping up investments in artificial intelligence.
People are talking about what Zuckerberg said. This is because of what Musk did with Twitter. Musks decision to buy Twitter started a discussion in the tech world. People are talking about if companies are working well how they are organized and if some big companies have become too complicated. Zuckerberg did not agree with everything Musk did. He said that Musks move made a lot of tech leaders think about how they run their companies. The discussion is about Twitter and other big companies like it. Zuckerberg and Musk are part of this discussion, about how tech companies work.