Seemingly inspired by the recent changes and actions happening at Twitter in the wake of its new owner and chief executive Elon Musk, a number of prominent businesses out of California’s Silicon Valley are starting to trim the fat as they dismiss their surplus employees.
Both the venture capital and startup industries have seemingly noticed and started taking notes as Musk bought the social media company and dismissed well over two-thirds of employees and saw no apparent impact on the operations of the giant platforms. As stated by the billionaire entrepreneur, the massive number of new Twitter users and the total amount of time users have been spending on the site have rapidly gone up under the man’s new guidance.
“The fact that Twitter is running well with headcount down significantly really matters,” explained Gavin Baker, the Chief Investment Officer for Atreides Management, going on to add that a number of executives in Silicon Valley have started to begrudgingly admire Musk. He pointed out an email from one venture-funded manager cutting employees and stated that only the groups top performers would be allowed to maintain their positions, harkening back to language utilized by Musk as he drastically downsized the previously bloated social media titan over the past few weeks.
“We will start to hear ‘lighter is faster’ and references to small teams being superior to large teams,” Baker went on. He highlighted that “strong CEOs cut early” when the odds about the success of the company are much higher, and the employee sport much better prospects on the job market, while “weak CEOs cut late and thereby put everyone at risk.”
“Nature is healing,” answered Musk, seemingly making reference to the former culture of scrappy founders in Silicon Valley to stretch and utilize every dollar while putting focus directly on business outcomes.
Going further than the dismissals, Musk explained to the remaining employees that they should expect “extremely hardcore” working hours if they want to end up staying at the company. He stated that the firm would be “much more engineering-driven,” showing an intent to move away from “design and product management” emphases.
In the wake of the mass dismissals of the social media company, executives have been seeing quite a bit of pressure from their various investors to cut back on their grossly bloated payrolls. Companies such as HP, Meta, DoorDash, Lyft, and Amazon have all announced mass layoffs or have paused their hiring processes, highlighting numerous macroeconomic pressures and excessive growth in their rosters in the wake of the demand surge that went along with the removal of lockdown measures.
