Elon Musk Reveals Biggest Crisis Since Taking Over As Twitter CEO: It Was 'Catastrophic'

This week, Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk was interviewed by BBC North America technology reporter James Clayton.

What Happened: The interview was carried live on Twitter Spaces and was listened to by over 3 million people.

During the interview, Musk was asked what was the most difficult thing he had to do as Twitter CEO. He said it was shutting down one of the server centers.

Musk termed it "catastrophic" and said the platform lost a lot of functionality. He said it was one of Twitter's "biggest crises." 

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Clayton then asked Musk about the layoffs at the platform, which took place after he purchased it in October 2022.

Musk said Twitter had about 1,500 people at the moment and before he took over the number was just below 8,000. He admitted that it was hard to let that many people go. 

Why It Matters: Widespread disruptions to Twitter were reported in late December days after Musk said he had shut down one of the company's data centers in Sacramento, California, reported The New York Times.

In November 2022, Twitter sacked almost 50% of its workforce. After letting go of nearly 3,700 employees, Musk said that there was "no choice" as the company was losing over $4 million per day.

Further cuts to the staff were also made. In February the company laid off 200 workers or nearly 10% of its then 2000-member workforce.

Musk is considered to be the first tech CEO to begin laying off workers, since then other companies such as Amazon.com, Inc, Dell Technologies, and Google parent Alphabet have also terminated thousands of employees.

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