Episode 12 · 15 November 2022 · 58:47
What Led to Twitter's Layoffs? Uncovering the Truth (Part 1 of 2)
What Led to Twitter's Layoffs? Uncovering the Truth (Part 1 of 2)
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Setting the scene: what actually happened at Twitter
The human story vs. the business reality
Twitter's unique challenge: a product struggling to monetise
The heartbreaking reality of Twitter's culture
How layoffs *should* be done: Stripe vs. Twitter
What united our guests: the importance of honesty
If employees know it's coming, what's the psychology?
How Elon went about it: cringeworthy or calculated?
The consensus: this was not handled well
Dr Candice's unique perspective as employee wellness lead
The ripple effect on remaining employees
Can Twitter's culture survive?
Show notes
What Led to Twitter's Layoffs? Uncovering the Truth (Part 1 of 2)
It was the tech story that dominated the news cycle: Elon Musk acquires Twitter for $44 billion, and within days, almost 50% of the workforce is let go. But it's not just the scale of the layoffs that raised eyebrows — it's how it was done.
In this episode, Al and Leanne dig into the messy reality behind the Twitter layoffs with exclusive interviews from three industry insiders:
- Stephen Waddington — PR guru, Visiting Professor of PR at Newcastle University, and former head of CIPR, offering expert opinion on how the brand and PR were handled
- Dr Candice Schaefer — Licensed Clinical Psychologist, Mental Health and Wellness Strategist, and until earlier this year, Global Head of Employee Wellness at Twitter, sharing the inside story
- Arun Krishnakumar — Graduate of the University of Oxford & London School of Economics, and author of Restaup: A Founder's Guide to Crisis Navigation, on best practice for managing crisis
From the human cost of mass layoffs to the long-term brand damage of a poorly handled exit, this is part one of a two-part deep dive into what really happened — and what other leaders can learn from it.
Top 3 Takeaways
Scale changes the story. When you lay off 50% of your workforce, you're not just making a business decision — you're creating a human catastrophe. The way you treat people in their worst moment defines how everyone else remembers you.
How you do it matters more than what you do. Stripe handled layoffs with empathy and transparency; Twitter's approach felt brutal and chaotic. The same business decision, delivered differently, produces completely different outcomes for brand, morale, and trust.
Culture is fragile — and once it's gone, it's gone. Twitter had a genuinely magical culture. But culture isn't just perks and ping-pong tables; it's the shared sense of purpose and belonging. When you decimate that overnight, the people who remain can't sustain it either.
More From Our Guests
Stephen Waddington
- Find him on Twitter, LinkedIn, or subscribe to his newsletter
Dr Candice Schaefer
- Follow her on Twitter (as @DrSchaefer) or LinkedIn
Arun Krishnakumar
- See his articles on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter
- His book, Restaup: A Founder's Guide to Crisis Navigation, is available on Amazon
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
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Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Al ElliottNice. Check out hopspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. I, I don't think he's got a plan at the moment. I think— and I don't understand what he's trying to do. Hello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work.
Leanne ElliottWelcome back to the Truth, Lies and Workplace Culture podcast. My name is Leanne. I'm a business psychologist.
Al ElliottAnd my name's Al, and I'm a business owner.
Leanne ElliottAnd welcome back.
Al ElliottHello.
Leanne ElliottHi.
Al ElliottIf this is your first, or maybe your second time listening, then welcome. Tell us what you're doing. Are you, are you driving? Are you at work? Are you skiving? That's probably quite a UK-centric term, that skiving, isn't it?
Leanne ElliottTo skive.
Al ElliottTo coast. Yes, debunk a point.
Leanne ElliottBe distracted.
Al ElliottTalking of being distracted, then today we are talking about, Leah, what?
Leanne ElliottWe are talking about the truth behind the Twitter layoffs. And let's be honest, the shit show that it currently is. I'll be honest, we have delayed recording this episode because every day we wake up and there is more in the media. Elon Musk has made yet another move. So as of this episode release date, the 15th of November, 2022, we're as up to date as we possibly can be. But yeah. Wow, we're going to explore what happened, why it happened, what you can learn from it, and, and yeah, speak to some experts as well, because Al and I can't possibly unpick this on our own.
Al ElliottDefinitely not. So just as a quick refresher then, so you must be living under a rock if you don't know that Elon acquired Twitter, the publicly traded company, now private, on October 27th. I'm going to go through the full timeline in a second, but the fallout has been quite massive really. Reportedly 50% of the staff, or up to 50% of the staff, have been fired. Large advertisers are disappearing. Users, I mean, if you've been on Twitter recently, you know that there's people are not happy about all this. So our main question we're asking is, did Elon handle the layoffs the right way? And what is the truth? And what are the lies behind this story? So this is basically gonna be 3 parts. We're gonna talk about what it means for the business of Twitter. Then we're gonna be talking about what the impact these layoffs have on both outgoing employees and the ones who remain. That's firmly Leanne's wheelhouse. And finally, we're gonna be talking about what does it mean for the brand and the users? Now we have some exclusive interviews, and we'll talk in a minute about the experts who are going to join us. But firstly, let's just remind ourselves of the timeline. So it seems a long time ago, but it was April 4th when Elon announced that he owned 9% of Twitter. And then a couple of days later, on the 11th, he was invited to join the board of directors but declined. And then on the 14th, he offered $44 billion. That's B. billion for Twitter, which was blocked by the board. So fast forward another 10 days, middle of April, end of April the 25th, the board finally accepts the offer. But then it's like a soap opera, isn't it? But then June the 6th, um, Elon says, I'm not going to go through with it because of these bots, these Twitter spam bots. We don't know whether that was just his way to try and get out of it or whether he was doing some kind of clever deal negotiation. And then finally on July the 8th, he backs out. And Twitter sues them. So fast forward to October the 4th, and apparently to avoid the lawsuit— but again, we don't know, he's a clever lad, maybe he, he had an idea that this was all going to happen all along— but he agrees to proceed with the acquisition. And on the 27th, he completes the deal. So this is October the 27th, we're not even a month away, a month in the past. He completes the deal and fires the CEO, which is Parag. Agrawal, I think is— I think you say— I've only ever seen his surname written down, so I don't know how you say it. And then on November 4th, he fires up to 50% of the workforce. And November 5th, lawsuits start against him. And this is where the advertisers— big, big advertisers like Audi and General Motors— are apparently pausing their ads and leaving the platform. And then just to mix it all up, about 5 days ago on the 10th, Elon says bankruptcy isn't out of the question. So that's a lot to take in. So we're going to be joined by 3 experts to talk about this. The first one is Stephen Waddington. Stephen is a visiting professor of PR for Newcastle University in the UK. He's also non-executive director for a number of PR agencies, and he's the past president of the UK-based Chartered Institute of Public Relations. So he's gonna be talking very much in terms of PR. Then we've got Alan Krishnakumar, who is a fintech influencer. He's a top 100 social leader and the top 100 Asian in UK tech. He's from University of Oxford, and he's also got a book called Restart Up, which is the Founder's Guide to Crisis Navigation. And the final guest we've got—
Leanne ElliottWell, if that isn't enough for you, I didn't, I didn't feel able to carry this psychology flag on my own. So a wonderful woman called Dr. Candice Schaefer, um, is joining us as well. She is a board-certified licensed clinical psychologist. You thought I was clever. Um, yeah, she's incredible. Um, she's a corporate mental health and wellbeing strategist. She's an international speaker and thought leader. And if that wasn't enough, between 2019 and 2022, she was the global head of employee wellness at— drumroll.
Al ElliottI can't do a drumroll.
Leanne ElliottTwitter.
Al ElliottThat's it. So we've got from the horse's mouth here, the global head of employee wellness at Twitter. So as this is very much a people thing, because we are going to talk a bit about the business and the brand, but the whole core story is the people. So, Leanne, do you want to give us the idea or the context of how it all fits in in terms of people?
Leanne ElliottYes. And I think the first thing we need to try and do is, is try and put the recent layoffs in the tech space into some type of context. So what we know, Twitter have laid off 50% of employees. So that's 3,700 people. Stripe as well recently have let go of 14% of employees. That's about 1,000. Lyft, 13% of employees, that's about 680. And then Meta, literally as we were interviewing some of our experts for the podcast, they announced that they are letting go 13% of their employees, which is a massive 11,000 people. If you don't have a calculator handy, I've done that maths for you. We're looking at a total of 16,380 people, give or take. A massive amount of people. To try and quantify this, 16,000 people is more than 19 Airbus A380s. They're the double-decker ones.
Al ElliottFancy.
Leanne ElliottThe fancy ones. School buses, 340. The Hollywood Bowl holds 17,500 people, so we've almost filled it. If you're from Canada, we know we have some listeners in Canada, welcome. The Canada Life Centre, which is home to the National Hockey League's Winnipeg Jets, actually holds 16,345. So we, we've, we've overfilled it. So the tricky thing is, from a psychological perspective, it's really hard for us to understand these types of numbers in terms of actual people, let alone empathize with them. Basically, our feeling system can't count. That's the simplest way of putting it. There's an amazing psychologist called Professor Paul Slovic. He actually calls this the deadly arithmetic of compassion. Um, he basically says that— I mean, he actually uses a, a phrase from Joseph Stalin, which might—
Al ElliottWe'd be quoting him on our podcast.
Leanne ElliottI know, this is such diversity we have. But yeah, Stalin reportedly said, one man's death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. I think that's really a really accurate reflection of the psychology that is going on. Statistics of mass impact simply don't move us or pushes to act in a way that they should. I'll leave the, uh, the link to, um, Professor Slovic's research in the show notes. It's very interesting. But the fact is, we've got a lot to get on with, so I won't go into any more detail. The point is, this isn't clickbait. This is a human story, as hard as it is for us to understand. So to help us, let's hear from our first guest, Dr. Candace Schaefer. I held a Twitter Space the day that they announced that they were going to have the layoffs. And speaking of this kind of peer support group, I said, you know, one last time, Tweeps, I want to do a listening circle and I'm just going to invite everybody on. And we had one employee that was like crying. She has, you know, a 2-month-old son. She's the primary breadwinner in the family, and she doesn't know what she's gonna do.
Al ElliottAs much as it is a human story, we have to remember, and this is what some of the users don't seem to understand, is that Twitter is a business, and it's now a privately held business. I've seen tweets this morning with someone who'd got 94 followers, no profile picture, tweeting at Elon Musk saying, I'm gonna be leaving now. I'm not paying for free speech. And I'm like, well, that's kind of, I suppose, what Elon wants is the people who are never gonna pay to just basically leave.
Leanne ElliottMm-hmm.
Al ElliottSo we have to remember, it's a privately held business. And there's a really famous saying, which I only found out today, it was a guy called Milton Friedman, who said, the business of business is to do business. So if Twitter isn't profitable, and if it does go to bankruptcy like Elon threatens, then nobody's gonna have any jobs. So we asked our experts a simple question. We said, do you think that Twitter and Stripe, which was the other guys that, that let people go, and we'll talk more about Stripe in a second, do you think they were simply overstaffed? And this is what Alan thought. I think Patrick Collison, the CEO of Stripe, himself admitted that they had overhired through the pandemic. And now that they're not seeing the same kind of growth in terms of revenues and revenue opportunities, they are having to let go of a few people. Then we asked the same question to Stephen Waddington, the PR expert. And let's just see what he thinks. You know, I've been a Twitter user for 15 years. I was trying to think how long. And the company has never really found a viable business model. So it's hard to say in that context whether it was overstaffed or not. Certainly, if you compare the ratios of employees— and this is, this is what Wall Street looks at— if you compare the ratio of employees to revenue or profit, then yes, it was It was overstuffed. So aside from the people who jump on the bandwagon of outrage, people who just want to be outraged by something, most people agree that the layoffs were inevitable. But we're wondering, why have they all seemed to have happened this month? Why have they happened now? We asked Alan what his thoughts were. What we're seeing today is a pivot by a lot of tech giants from— or tech firms from pure growth-focused approach to profitability. And that is a good thing. And that is what crisis does to entrepreneurs and founders and boards, which is let's focus on sustaining or sustainable growth rather than just mindless growth, just pumping numbers. That could work in a bull market where you have to keep churning out numbers of people you've acquired, numbers of daily active users and Unit economics, that as we call that. But in crisis, it is all about, do you have enough cash? From a decision perspective, it's got to be very data-driven, very analytical. However, in terms of how they're going about executing is perhaps the more important thing in times like these. I asked the same question to Steven. It was on the way to creating a sustainable business model. I think the challenge is lack of management focus. So you had a period of time A really important period of time, actually, that period through COVID and emergence from COVID when it had a part-time CEO. So Jack Dorsey was working part-time, and that only got corrected about 6 months or so ago. And with an organization by its nature of the size and scale of Twitter, you cannot have part-time management.
Leanne ElliottMm-hmm.
Al ElliottIt's an absolutely full-time job. And in fact, we even asked the psychologist and the person who was the head of wellness at Twitter whether the layoffs needed to happen.
Leanne ElliottIt's okay if you're going to have layoffs, but there's a way to approach it that recognizes people's humanity and what they have going on in their lives and being considerate.
Al ElliottSo it does seem like the big tech players are all nursing wounds this month because it was only last week, I think Amazon became the first public company to lose $1 trillion in market cap.
Leanne ElliottMakes the eyes water, doesn't it? Flipping heck, I thought I had money troubles.
Al ElliottIt makes my recent loss on Bitcoin, it puts it into perspective, I think. And Netflix is similarly, it seems like it's on the ropes. So layoffs from Stripe and Facebook are hitting. So we asked this important question, do we think the tech bubble is bursting? This is what Alan thinks. So I wouldn't call it a tech bubble bursting. It is just a correction. As interest rates go up, the valuation models that have interest rates as the denominator are all going to show a smaller number in terms of valuations, which means a correction in share price. So that is a natural cycle. And as soon as you hear that the Fed is starting to pivot, you're going to see the market going back again. So it is not new. It is a very— very well understood and known cycle. It is just about how much is the Fed willing to push the market down before we start seeing a recovery. So we're going to see the recovery very soon. So I wouldn't call it a bubble, um, but it is about how we go about then reacting to the bubble.
Leanne ElliottOkay, so if we know it's going to be harder, this whole economic environment is potentially harder on the tech community, We have to ask ourselves, is Elon Musk the right person for this job? I don't know, but we did ask Stephen.
Al ElliottI think the issue that, that we have, and I think the issue that Elon is now faced with, is Twitter is a product, yes, but it's much more than a product. It's, um, it's a public sphere, it's public conversation, and it's a platform of interconnected relationships. Um, and that's I think we're seeing this play out now. Elon's brought a product mindset to it, and it isn't a product. It's very, very— it's something very much more complex. So it's interesting because Stephen alluded to the fact that Elon's strategy is really, really confusing. For example, he tweeted out and he suggested a $20 verification fee, which obviously everyone rebelled against. And instead of going back to his board or his marketing department and saying, you know, what do we think? He just went back and replied, how about $8? Now, it just felt that he just pulled that figure from— well, you know where he might have pulled it from. And he also seems to be trolling his own users on Twitter. So we have to ask, what is the potential impact on Twitter given Musk's quite strange approach to things? I don't think he's got a plan at the moment. I think— and I don't understand what he's trying to do because he's paid a lot of money for this asset and immediately, uh, and immediately announced a reduction in the staff. And you've said it yourself, half. That's dramatic. Um, you know, it's absolutely brutal, um, and will have created all sorts of chaos internally within the organization. Frankly, I'm surprised the platform's still up. And that's without even thinking about the emotional and, and human cost. It can't possibly be right in any, in any set of circumstances. I think you've got an individual here in Elon Musk who's brought bought Twitter and hasn't got a plan, um, and, um, you know, gut reaction, cut costs, um, which is what you saw him do. I mean, you know, I could, I could understand it if he'd come out, uh, come out with some sort of, of plan. And we were talking about the Stripe, um, this, the Stripe layoffs, um, as well, you know, very different situation in that they They announced what was happening with the company, took full responsibility, and set out a very clear strategy for for what was happening. In we've said it in in the case of Twitter, it's an absolute shit show. No one knows what's going on. Customers don't know what's going on. The sorry advertisers don't know what's going on, and they're leaving. Users don't know what's going on. They're just you know in the extreme they're being trolled by. by Musk himself. And goodness knows how anyone that's employed by the organization must feel. As we say, it must be absolute chaos. So that was Stephen's thoughts. So we asked Candace, who actually had worked at Twitter before, what she thought.
Leanne ElliottIt's heartbreaking, to be completely honest with you. Twitter has a very magical culture. It's like I said, it's very hard to explain. And Elon Musk started the talk about purchasing the company like literally a week after I left. And being at Twitter is challenging enough because it's constantly in the spotlight. The employees therefore are kind of also constantly constantly in the spotlight, even though they're not directly. When your company is being talked about constantly in the news, there's a certain pressure that goes along with that. And the internal comms team, God bless them, at Twitter, they know how to handle a crisis like no other. If anyone out there needs great crisis communication internal managers, Just hit me up, I will tell you the names, and they could easily fit in, I think, in any organization. But just seeing how much uncertainty the employees were put under for the longest period of time of, is this deal going to happen? Is it not going to happen? We also had a change of leadership from Jack Parag shortly thereafter, and you barely had any chance to even try to understand Parag's leadership style. There were changes in the C-suite. It just put a ton of uncertainty, I think, in a lot of Twitter employees. And I'm proud of those who stuck it out all the way until the purchase happened a couple of weeks ago. But at the same point, worry about their well-being and how much stress they've undergone.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottI can't imagine how difficult it is to be productive and actually function to your fullest capacity when there's just this constant circus going around in the background.
Al ElliottHmm.
Leanne ElliottAnd being asked about it too, because for me, I left Twitter maybe 7, 8 months ago, and all of my coworkers still ask me about it as if I work there. And so not only are you thinking about it at work, Every person you know is asking you, what's it like? How are things going? And you can't escape it. I think Candace brings up a really good point there. And, you know, there's been so much lead-up, as Al kind of talked us through the timeline. It's put so much pressure on people and a lot of uncertainty for the longest of time. So that's kind of the business viewpoint in a nutshell. And I think it kind of can be summarized by the point that commercially, no one's really arguing with the decisions that these massive tech companies have had to make. But how they went about it does leave some, some room for opinion. So let's move on to people. And I think before we can start to understand the shifts and changes that people at Twitter in particular have been through, It's important to understand how things were. So here's Dr. Candace Schaefer, as we've said, the former global head of employee wellness at Twitter, and she's going to explain. So previously they did not have anyone in that role, or at least for a while. And so my responsibility was to build an overall employee wellbeing program from the ground up, which meant kind of looking at the different pillars of Well-being and really prioritizing as to what should be the most pressing given the issues that are happening with the workforce. So I joined in 2019, and I had about a 9-month head start before the pandemic happened. And then, you know, my big focus being a mental health practitioner is— I'm not gonna lie, it's on mental health. And when I was at Facebook, I just learned so much about burnout and why this is such a pervasive problem in tech and You know, around, you know, the workforce in general. It's not just in tech, but particularly with the younger generations that are putting a lot of their time and energy into work and using it as their sole source of fulfillment can really burn out easily. And so I put a lot of focus around burnout prevention and also building community. So in a remote workforce, it can be really challenging to feel connected to other people. And you don't have the office, and particularly during the pandemic, we didn't have an office either. And so how do we build connections with one another that we would normally get in the office? And so I created a peer support program. We also called it a mental health allyship program where people could just learn the basics of listening. It seems like a foreign concept, but Listening is actually really hard and just learning to hold a space for somebody. And so after, after that launched, it was an incredibly successful initiative we had in a company of maybe 5,000 employees. We had 500 trained in that, those basics of listening, and continued on even after I left. And of course, we also asked Dr. Candace about the culture at Twitter when she was there. It is an amazing culture. The tweets that you see on Twitter from people who are just let go from Twitter do not lie about the culture. I miss it very much. And really, I wish there was an easy way to explain the culture, but it's just very much collegial. Everyone's excited about the platform and really feeds off of each other's vibes. And I particularly was excited about Twitter, just given the fact that while I was interviewing, Jack Dorsey wanted to interview me. For a CEO of a company as large as Twitter, I At the time, I was like a nervous wreck. And unfortunately, we never got that interview scheduled because he is a very busy guy. But the fact that the CEO has his own sense of mission and really wants wellness to be an important part of the culture at Twitter was really important to me. And that's something that I learned previously at Facebook. That was something I was looking for in a new role.
Al ElliottHmm.
Leanne ElliottSo to flip this slightly, I mean, let's put this critical lens on. Given what we know about what, let's be honest, seems unsustainable rapid growth of these massive tech companies, added in with the current economic climate, which we actually talked a lot about on our last episode, if you haven't checked that out, do. So given those 2 factors, should people really be surprised if they lose their jobs in tech? I asked Al.
Al ElliottI mean, definitely not in capitalist Corporate America, right? I think just from an employee protection perspective, I feel Europe is a lot more protective of their employees than the US, culturally as well. And that comes with, I mean, the growth in the US is also generally higher and faster and more reactive. When it starts happening. So when there's high returns, you're always going to assume higher risks. So it's just the nature of the beast. So I have spoken to a bunch of my American friends and colleagues or former colleagues, and they are happy to accept that one Friday they show up and they get fired. That is the nature of the beast. But the bit that really worries me about all these things, and I keep coming back to it, as you probably realize, is not the fact that they are having to fire people. It is the fact that it is just about how they go about doing it.
Leanne ElliottSo again, we're coming back to how it's done. So what is the right way to lay people off from a business and people perspective? Let's hear from Stephen.
Al ElliottSo let's not make any mistake, right? Layoffs within any organization are absolutely Brutal. It's a sort of bereavement on a corporate scale. And the emotional cost is really high. We bring our whole selves to work. We invest increasingly in our whole selves in our professional lives. And when that's suddenly and abruptly brought to an end out of our control, then it's brutal. And it is a bereavement process. Absolutely is.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottNow, if you look at the 2 ways that these similar situations have been handled, in the case of Stripe, empathetically, via a memo where the founders took total responsibility for the situation, although they contextualized it in terms of the market, but they took full responsibility for overhiring. As a result of the boom we saw during COVID the e-commerce boom. And they explained the rationale for what they were doing. You know, you look at the— and the statement's very human and it's very, very empathetic. So in terms of, you know, handling a truly awful situation as best you can, I think that's a, you know, an example of good practice. In the case of the Twitter statement. Statement was written, you know, in a mix of language, in the— sometimes in the third person. It was signed off by Twitter. It was just impersonal, didn't explain what was happening. It seems arbitrary what Musk is doing.
Leanne ElliottAnd yes, while it did seem brutal to let so many people go at once, Al does have an opinion on this.
Al ElliottWhen you, when you know you're getting into a crisis Always assume the worst and do not do firing of staff every 3 months to survive the crisis. Take a big cut upfront so that you bring the cost base of the organization to a very lean and in some sense mean level so that from there you can start working upwards. And the morale of who are staying in the organization is not too poor because they know the worst is behind them. Whereas if you do 5% today, 5% in 3 months' time, and another 5% in 6 months' time, that is not healthy for anyone. And that was a constant insight I kept getting from CEOs who've done this in the past.
Leanne ElliottOne of the things that I really noted from talking to our guests this week, and one thing that really united people in their opinion on how things should be done. It's really about making sure that it's done with transparency and support. So let's hear from Alan first.
Al ElliottAnd be honest with yourself and with your organization, saying it's tough times, we have to survive. This is the way we think is the best for the organization to survive. And how can we help you? What are the things that you will need? You probably will find 1% of the audience that you're planning to fire to be extremely vulnerable. So what do you do to do the extra mile to protect them and give them the additional cushion? So those were the points that really came through in my conversations with those CEOs.
Leanne ElliottAnd I think where a lot of, you know, that if you look at social media and people at Twitter who have been impacted, either people who are staying or people who have left, you know, there's understandable outrage because of the lack of communication from the leadership team, the fact that, that comms were signed by Twitter rather than a specific person. Um, and I think this is something quite shocking from, from Dr. Candace about communications at Twitter. I say this also, I still have many colleagues at Twitter. Um, they've received no communication from leadership whatsoever, um, still to this point. Um, and so, and the emails that said you know, we're going to be laying off, were unsigned. Like, there was no one person attached to that email. It's just Twitter.
Al ElliottSo here's a question then. If employees know it's coming, if they know they're going to get laid off, from a psychological point of view, what difference does it make, a more human-centered approach? Like, why do we need empathy if really the bottom Line is, I'm so sorry you've not got a job.
Leanne ElliottI think it's a really good question now, particularly people at Twitter who have been through this roller coaster since April this year, more than six months. They knew it was coming, right? They knew this was a very real possibility that redundancies could happen. The scale of them maybe not, but certainly the possibility. But again, I think it comes back down to how you go about it. People can be logical. People have business brains. They know commercially something has to change, but that doesn't mean we, we have to go about it in a purely business and commercial way. We can show empathy. We can take a human approach. Let's hear from Candace again. A, you express that empathy to your, your employees who may be suffering job losses. Just because you're letting them go doesn't mean you can't treat them like a human being. And I think that's the biggest thing that I have noticed from not just layoffs with Twitter, but with a lot of different companies over the past couple of years is you're really taking the human dignity out of it by treating all of these people like they're a number or just a being that works for you rather than an actual person who has a family or doesn't you know, have enough savings left in, in their bank account to make sure that they're going to get through to whatever the next step is. And so being considerate and being empathetic is really about giving your employees the benefit of the doubt that they will understand. But you also work with them to make sure that they have enough time so that they can put everything that they need to do Um, to get their life in order so that their world doesn't come crashing down completely. And as we said, you know, Twitter isn't the only tech company to be really feeling it at the moment in terms of this economic pressure. Um, but you know, there's a right way to go about it and arguably a wrong way to go about it. So let's compare Twitter and Stripe and let's see what Stephen thinks.
Al ElliottSo I think that— so, Al, the, the other thing we should say is that the complete— the comms team across the board within Twitter was also fired. So, you know, he's also— he's also shown that, uh, uh, he doesn't really— he's not really that interested in engaging with the communities around Twitter, whether they be advertisers or, or the media or, or users. So again, that lens, that engineering lens, um, that's not to say, you know, um, that's not to say, uh, engineers don't have human characteristics. Absolutely they do. But he's very much approaching this from a product problem as opposed to a human relationship problem. I think, you know, in the context of what does good look like, I think you look to the Stripe, you look to the way that Stripe managed this process, very clearly setting out in a memo to staff. There's also the process, just the process of handling how someone leaves an organization, you know, and it's It's you want wherever possible to create good exits for people. So for all it's not a really awful situation, you know you you can create good endings, and I think that's really really important for closure for individuals closure. And again, in the case of the Stripe situation, you know they're promising or they made the commitment of of. additional payments and support for staff that are leaving the company. In terms of Twitter, you got informed by an email to your personal account. The next thing you knew, all your systems were shut down, and that's it. That's absolutely brutal from a human, just a very human point of view. Okay, so we've covered the business side of things and how that's impacted the business. We've just talked about the people side of things and how it impacts the people. Let's talk about the brand. What's really confusing me is how Elon's approach is going to affect both his own brand, because he does have a brand with obviously SpaceX and Tesla. He's got his own brand, and then how it's going to affect Twitter's. So we asked Alan what he thought. See, it's one thing is about Elon Musk. But in general, I think what's starting to see— what we're starting to see Generally, there's a very, I don't know, cringeworthy culture from some of these big billionaires is talking things about situations and crisis that could affect a lot of people so openly on Twitter. Like, firing 75% of Twitter staff should never be discussed on Twitter. Just imagine the amount of emotional turmoil they would've gone through. Again, we see that a lot in crypto markets day in and day out, where really immature— that's heights of immaturity. You've got billions that you're managing as a CEO, and you have to show some level of responsibility to the people who've who've trusted you to look after that cash. The same thing applies to Elon Musk as well. $54 billion. It's not just his— by affecting his workforce, he's also affecting his shareholders in some sense, because who's going to be trusting the organization to go and apply for a job there, even if they were hiring in the future, if that is the kind of culture that he's trying to build? There will be a few people whom he can pay really high salaries to hire, but they still need the foot soldiers to get the job done. So I think that he's probably hurt himself as much as he's hurt his staff, but his staff are going to feel, who particularly been affected by the fire drill, are going to be affected more in the short term and medium term than him. But I used to have very high respect for the man. And then it's just that some of these folks, when they get to a point of either power or money or whatever, they just lose sense of empathy. They just lose common sense, whatever it takes to do the right things the right way. I think they just don't see it, I guess. And feeling that sense of infallible, is that the word? I don't know. Just—
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottJust kind of lost for words. Um, but how did he go about doing it? Cringeworthy, the way, the way he's gone about doing it.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number 1 management podcast— that's us, by the way— and the UK's number 1 marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioral science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking. And you're not gonna say which. Phil, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s—
Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottSeamless, seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil. Uh, we've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioural science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff, and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.
Leanne ElliottIt is, it's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that will be right Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Al ElliottIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Al ElliottI am. Go and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this. So come back. I'll cut that out. Keep that in. And obviously we need to speak to the king of PR, Stephen Waddington. So this is what Stephen had to say. What Musk is doing in terms of, you know, on the one hand, he's making statements about brand safety being really important and trust and confidence on the platform being really important. But then, you know, firing anybody or getting rid of the teams that are responsible for moderation. And, you know, it just doesn't make sense. So you've got two things. You've got a situation really badly handled, but then also On top of that, the sort of arbitrary nature of what's been done. And I think Musk is coming at this, as I say, as a product engineer and just hasn't considered the human aspect at all.
Leanne ElliottSo I think the consensus is fairly there in that Elon Musk did not deal with this in a very good way. So you have to ask yourself, is this just going to be a little dent in Elon's crown? Is it gonna be the thing that topples him? Or is he the entrepreneurial genius that will figure it all out? I asked Candace. Uh, I think it's a mix of both. Um, I mean, clearly he's done some things right. Uh, Tesla is a great example. And now, at least in the United States, every car company is trying to figure out how to go electric. So he's done something right there. But what I think is the issue is he may have thought that taking over Twitter was a lot easier than it actually is. I think people look at social media companies and think that it's an easy business to run, and it's very, very, very complicated. And so with something particularly like content moderation, I was laughing because Elon Musk had tweeted that Twitter is going to be the source of truth. That's what we will allow on this platform. And Jack Dorsey immediately tweeted back to him, the source of truth to whom? Because who determines what is the facts, what is the truth, is the biggest question when it comes to Getting misinformation off of the platform and is one of the most complicated problems I've ever seen in tech. So I think he, he probably came into this a little naively that it was gonna be an easy fix to make it profitable when just from a business perspective, it's a lot more complicated than that. Now, content moderation on the platform is a big, big issue. It's something that's been all in the press. It's something that our experts all picked up on and talked about. So I think it's really important now that we take a moment just to see what our experts think about content moderation and the impact that can have. Let's speak to Alan first.
Al ElliottThe challenge that they're going to have, and I think I'm not a big fan of Mark Zuckerberg, never been one. But one thing that resonates with me that he mentioned was running a social media platform is like running a country. You can never completely eradicate crime in a country, right? You will always have pockets of crime from time to time. So if there are incidents on the social media platform through some kind of opinion sharing or whatever, which actually kind of is an outlier, It could be political, it could be a terrorist organization doing something. There is only so much they can do to balance getting that out and balancing that with free speech. So that balance, to achieve that balance, it's extremely hard for social media platforms to do that and bringing that moderation. And I think that is probably a gray area. I don't think Musk is quite I don't think he's getting it because I've always seen him as quite a binary guy. When you push binary guys to operate in shades of gray, they often struggle. So how he handles the moderation around Twitter is going to be probably the make or break moment for Twitter, I guess, in the long run.
Leanne ElliottSo what I loved about talking to Dr. Candace about is that her background as an employee wellness but actually stemmed from content moderation. So she used to work with a lot of people, a lot of employees, and design programs to help them deal with the sheer trauma that can come up of moderating this type of content. Um, she has something really interesting to say about, um, any social media platform being like a digital world. So I mean, since I'm not in Twitter anymore, I don't know the exact numbers, but, um, the line that I've read for Twitter has been content moderation. People who engage in content moderation were only reduced by 15%, in contrast to, you know, the company as a whole was 60%. And I don't know what the, what the numbers are on Facebook yet. I'm sure we'll find out. But what's also important to, to know is that many, almost every company that owns a social media platform, whether that's TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, all of them use third-party vendors and outsource a lot of that content moderation to other companies. So it may not even necessarily be a direct impact depending on if they choose to keep funding these vendors. But sometimes there's There's more content moderation going on on the outside of the company with another employer than there is on the inside. And what does that mean for users, do you think? Users of Twitter, of Facebook, will we see a difference as users of the platforms? You may. And again, it just depends on how many people they've cut, but also what policies they're continuing to enforce. And the way I try to explain it for people who are unfamiliar with content moderation, you got to imagine that a social media platform is kind of like a digital world. You have citizens running around yelling things and doing, you know, living their daily lives. And we have policemen on that platform and in that digital world. And above that, you have detectives. You have people that are doing deep dives on serious criminal activity going on on the platform, who then eventually pass over that information to law enforcement in the real world. And then you have politicians in that digital world, people who create the policies that determine whether or not someone is violating terms of service. Disagreement. And politicians ultimately determine what laws are being broken and when. So if the policies change, the platform may or may not become less or more safe. And if you eliminate the detective level, which is usually what companies like Facebook and Twitter have internally, you may see more egregious crimes being let go. Talking like terrorism, child sex trafficking, like pretty, pretty horrible criminal activity going on there. And then our, our first level policemen, which is mostly the outsourced workers that you would see, they'll probably be less affected. So it, it really depends on where they're going to be making cuts. But it is very possible that you will see more of a dumpster fire. And this is part of the story that really has been developing as we've been prepping this episode. So, you know, we, we had the guy who was Twitter's head of safety and integrity at Twitter, a gentleman called Yoel Roth, on the 4th of November. He tweeted, "Quote: Here are the facts about where Twitter's trust and safety and moderation capacity stands today. Our core moderation capabilities remain in place. Yesterday's reduction in force affected approximately 15% of our trust and safety organization, as opposed to approximately 50% of cuts company-wide." And yet, a few days later, Mr. Roth resigned. So, according to Elon Musk, the plan is to use AI to help with content moderation. But will this be effective? Let's see what Candace thinks. The idea that, you know, AI is going to replace the human content moderator, I don't think is realistic, just given how violations change over time and policies change over time. People figure out new ways to violate the terms of service that AI cannot keep up with. And so we're constantly going to need human content moderators. We just may need less of them.
Al ElliottSo there clearly seems to be a big threat to the brand of Twitter now it's gone private. Let's find out from Candace what she thinks as an ex-insider.
Leanne ElliottJust simply because there's no accountability to the shareholders. Shareholders can be a good thing because they have to know what's going on. They have a right to know what's going on. But the less transparent you have to be when you take a company private, there's no one you have to say yes or no to. It's just the person who owns the company, in this case Elon Musk, and what he says goes.
Al ElliottWe also asked Alan and Steven what advice they would give to Elon. Very simply, make your decisions based on data. It doesn't matter how cruel it is. But when you execute them, let others execute them, you've been seen as a ruthless leader, you have absolutely no empathy. Just delegate that task, hire someone to do it with a lot more empathy. That is probably the one rule of thumb I would give him. He is a product design genius. He risks, though, eroding all the value that he's created in all his other organizations because of the way he's managing this process now. The best thing he could do is bring someone in as a leader to the organization who operationally understands the public sphere aspect, the public conversation aspect of Twitter, the fact that it is a platform of human relationships and it isn't a product. He should probably also stop insulting the users of the platform and the advertisers of the platform, um, because that's gonna, that's gonna create a, um, an absolute backlash. And, and, you know, critically, he needs a strategy for what he's doing here. And, you know, he came, uh, came in with this grand idea of, of, um, free speech and opening up Twitter to, to free speech. Well, that's all well and good, but Um, you've, you know, you have to have moderation on, on a platform if you're going to create safe spaces for humans and brands to, to advertise.
Leanne ElliottSo we've talked about the business, we've talked about the people, we've talked about the brand. We have to ask ourselves what's next. And who knows, it has been quite a whirlwind already. Um, but I mean, let's, let's talk about something maybe a little bit more positive, perhaps. We know Twitter isn't the only tech company that's in this position at the moment. As we said, Stripe also laid off about 14% of their employees. So will the approach that Stripe took have a more positive impact on the people that remain in the business? And what does that mean for their culture? Let's hear from Al.
Al ElliottSo this again comes from anecdotal evidence that I gathered during my interviews. The moment you do the ripping of the plaster exercise, you're basically sending a message to the people who remain. That we've reduced our cost base, which means our runway has increased to 3 years or 4 years or whatever, which will easily see us through the crisis that we are in today. And the markets are probably going to turn around in 6 to 9 and 12 months' time. So one of the things I have written in the book is how the CEO addresses the remainders and how they go about telling them or giving them the comfort. That we can now start innovating. And one of the things that I think it was a startup CEO from India who mentioned that as soon as we ripped off the plaster and the teams knew that they're kind of in some sense out of danger, they started being a lot more proactive and more innovative because they knew that That could be new directions the firm can take because there's a lot more capital available. Of course, not spending crazily, but they had the mind space to almost unleash themselves in more creative ways within the organization. I think that because a lot of bureaucracy would've been removed in the organization by just shedding fat in some sense. So I think that was a Yeah. Really good insight I got through the process. Yeah. So when you kind of get more leaner and meaner and more efficient through crisis, it's a good thing for the organization in general, both from a P&L perspective, but also from employees who remain in the organization. They feel that they've done something right to stay or to be part of the people who've been kept in the organization despite the crisis, and it only helps them in some sense. So Alan's clearly saying that this is a big opportunity. There's a pivot, there's a turnaround, there's a period of testing. You've got a product genius at the helm. But let's see if Candice thinks the same thing.
Leanne ElliottI don't know, to be honest. I think Facebook has gone through such a metamorphosis, no pun intended, Meta. But Twitter, I don't I am afraid Twitter will not recover from this. This is so decimating for what's been happening over the past year. And, you know, companies like Google, I think, seem relatively stable, but you just never know. They change over time. And the one thing I've noticed with tech is most companies like to keep this mentality that we're startup, that we have this fun atmosphere where people are really working together and doing something that's revolutionary. And we are a flat organization and anyone can talk to anybody. And these companies outgrow being a startup very quickly with the amount of success that they keep. But it's almost an illusion to the employees as well that an organization is flat and that you're at a startup because this is a corporate business now. There will have to be cuts. There will have to be things that are done from a budgetary perspective. And it can be hard to absorb that. And I think a lot of people will romanticize being a startup. I remember being at Facebook and they're saying, oh, we're a startup. I'm like, We're not a startup. If we're past IPO, you know, we're really not a startup, but people like to keep that mentality that we are. So what is it about Twitter then? Because you said you're worried that Twitter won't recover. What makes the situation with Twitter different to that with Stripe and Meta, with Facebook? It was the cut of how many people were let go. The culture is, I think, the one thing Twitter had, like, Twitter was not necessarily the most profitable. And that was okay, I think, for a lot of people working at Twitter because they liked the people. There was something there with the culture uniquely. And when you cut half of the workforce, and then now, you know, I'm seeing people who are just leaving, like they don't want to be a part of it if this many of their colleagues have left.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottAnd so I don't know how many people are going to remain to keep the original culture. And now that it's a completely private company, there's going to be less transparency going on as to what is happening in the company. And usually that, I would say, is probably not a good thing for employees. Well, I feel like we've covered some ground there, Al.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottGoodness, there is, there is a lot there. And I think what we're gonna do, we're gonna, we're gonna pause this. We're gonna release the rest of it in part 2, which will release as a bonus episode the next couple of days, where we will come back to our guests. And I feel like we've kind of done kind of where we've been. So I think we'll really focus on what's left for Twitter, particularly the people who are, who are still there, what it means for them. In terms of business leaders, what we can learn from this. If unfortunately you are considering layoffs, how you can approach this in a way that is human-centred and will protect the wellbeing of your employees. And then I guess just finally, some support for people who have been impacted by redundancy. My heart genuinely goes out to you. I was made redundant in 2015. It still gives me shivers when I think back to it. So, we will definitely be talking through some practical tips and psychological tips and everything you need to get back on your feet and get back out there.
Al ElliottDefinitely. And so we'll hear more from our 3 guests. The first one, Stephen Waddington, the PR expert who's a visiting professor of PR. He's a non-exec director, and you can find him on Twitter at twitter.com/wadds, W-A-D-D-S, although maybe not for much longer. He has been talking about moving to the other platform.
Leanne ElliottWe're also going to speak again to Alan Krishnakumar, who is the author of RestartUp: A Founder's Guide to Crisis Navigation. You can also find Alan on Twitter @0xarunk.
Al ElliottAnd finally, we're going to go back to Dr. Candice Schaefer, who is that clinical psychologist and also the ex-global head of employee wellness at Twitter, who's got so many juicy juicy stories about what it's like to work at Twitter. So if you haven't subscribed yet, click that subscribe button because you're in the next episode, part 2 of this will pop straight into your fancy little podcast app without you having to do anything. Got any questions? Got any thoughts? Find us on social media, Truth Lies Work, just search for that or go to truthliesandwork.com.
Leanne ElliottAnd while you're looking for us, look for Dr. Shaffer at the same time, @DrShaffer on Twitter, but we'll leave all the links to everyone's socials in the show notes.
Al ElliottSee you next time. Bye.