Slash first, fix later: How Elon Musk cuts costs

On a Saturday morning in December 2022, Elon Musk summoned finance executives at Twitter, which he had bought six weeks earlier, to a conference call. Then he drilled into a spreadsheet that contained the social media company’s expenditures.

Musk was angry, three people who were on the call said. Even though Twitter had just shed more than three-quarters of its employees — leaving it with just over 1,500 workers, down from nearly 8,000 — the company’s spending still appeared to be out of control, the billionaire told attendees.