Elon Musk on why he spent “the last five weeks cutting costs like crazy” at Twitter – Times of India

Has it really been five weeks? At times it feels like all has passed in a jiffy whereas at times one is like “wait, how long has this been going on?” We are talking about Elon Musk’s reign at Twitter — which started on October 28 with him walking in with a sink — and it actually has been just over seven weeks. A lot has happened at Twitter. Firing, hiring, features being rolled out, the same feature put on pause, a feature getting hooked then again reinstated — a lot!
Musk was actually a part of Twitter Spaces — ironically a feature that was hooked and then reinstated — and gave some insights about his tenure at the company.

Of planes, engines being on fire

While talking about the revenue situation at Twitter, Musk revealed that Twitter was on course to spend close to $5 billion next year. There was also a debt on the transaction, $1.5 billion in debt servicing would be needed. Musk said that there would have been a negative cash flow situation of close to $3 billion next year, which was “not good” for the company.
“This company is like, basically, you are in a plane that is headed toward the ground at high speed with the engines on fire and the controls don’t work,” Musk said, before adding, that’s why he spent “the last five weeks cutting costs like crazy.”
And he did. As per reports, Twitter’s workforce was close to 8,000 before Musk took over. Currently, it is somewhere close to 2,000. That is a lot of cost saving for Twitter. He also said that he feels Twitter will “now be okay” next year but it will still take a lot of work to ensure that.
One of Musk’s revenue driver for Twitter is Twitter Blue, the subscription service, which was rolled out last week.