Twitter shares for remaining staff: Musk
After several heavy rounds of layoffs, there are now less than 2000 employees left. But they are now being pampered with Twitter shares.
Personnel was Twitter’s biggest expense
Before the acquisition by Elon Musk, Twitter had about 7,500 employees, who averaged more than a ton a year and took home led a very luxurious life. Before the acquisition, personnel costs accounted for about three-fifths of all Twitter costs, around 3 to 4 billion a year.
Half of them were fired soon after the takeover of the Twitter shares, which grew into even more in the following months. What is particularly striking is how well Twitter continues to run, despite the fact that three-quarters of the staff has now been laid off. Apparently three-quarters of the workforce could easily be missed, which is different in healthcare and other places where people really have to work with their hands. Abolishing moderation on Twitter and replacing it with an algorithm turned out to be a good move, even though the European Union is now on the warpath.
Remaining hard core now pampered
Now that Musk, who is already unpopular in progressive circles, has had the hot chestnuts out of the fire, other tech giants, such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Gates and Zuckerberg, have also taken the plunge. They also announced mass layoffs in quick succession.
After this latest round of layoffs, Musk is left with a hard core of just under 2000 good developers and account managers, and of course he wants to keep them. And what better way than to make them co-shareholders, as was customary in the early days of the internet boom, Musk must have thought.
Twitter shares now a goldmine
Accounting wise, Twitter has now become a goldmine. Because if you can achieve about the same earnings at less than half the cost, as Musk seems to have achieved now, the book profit, and with it the stock market value of a company, will be many times higher.
Whether Musk will keep this promise is of course not 100% certain, but as it now seems, the remaining plagued Twitter staff will now also benefit.
