Elon Musk says there's more room for job cuts at Big Tech companies

• Elon Musk said Big Tech can make more job cuts without affecting productivity, at the WSJ CEO Council.
• "There were a lot of people doing things that don't seem to have a lot of value," Musk said about Twitter.

Elon Musk thinks Big Tech can probably afford to cut more staff without affecting productivity.

"I think there is a potential for significant cuts at other companies without affecting their productivity, in fact increasing their productivity," Musk said during an interview at The Wall Street Journal's CEO Council on Tuesday.

Musk, who is the executive chairman and Chief Technology Officer at Twitter, was commenting on cost cuts at the platform and other Silicon Valley companies — many of which have already been rocked by sweeping layoffs this year.

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According to the tracker layoffs.fyi, tech companies globally laid off 165,000 employees in 2022. That number jumped to almost 200,000 tech workers being let go in 2023 so far.

Twitter is one of the Big Tech companies that has seen a massive reduction in headcount since Musk bought the company for $44 billion last year.

Insider's Kali Hays reported on May 2 that Twitter's headcount was down to around 1,000 employees — down nearly 90% from the 7,500 staffers the social media company employed when Musk acquired the company.

"There were a lot of people doing things that don't seem to have a lot of value," Musk said at the CEO forum about the staff at Twitter before he took over.

He said this is probably true of most Silicon Valley companies too.

"Twitter was in a situation where you'd have a meeting of 10 people — one person with an accelerator and nine with a set of brakes, so you didn't go very far," he added.

Even with a leaner staff strength, Twitter has been "gungho" about releasing more functionality and features to Twitter in the last six months than it did in the last six years, he added.

Twitter will be adding more employees — with 1,500 "a reasonable number," Musk said, without elaborating further.

Twitter is also "roughly breakeven," Musk told the BBC in April. He said in Tuesday's interview Twitter may become cashflow positive in June "if we get lucky" — a point he first made in March.

"I think we're hopefully on the comeback," Musk added.

Twitter responded to Insider's request for comment with an automated message that didn't address the matter.