In a wide-ranging interview with BBC News, Elon Musk revealed details about his leadership at Twitter – including his mass layoffs and appointing a new "CEO" – his dog.
Musk, 51, took over the social media company in November, calling himself "Chief Twit," but promised he would appoint new leadership. It does not appear that happened, but in an interview with BBC News' James Clayton on Twitter Spaces, a livestreaming function of the social media site, Musk joked that he did.
"I did stand down," he said. "I keep telling you, I'm not the
CEO of Twitter. My dog is the CEO of Twitter." In the past, Musk tweeted a
photoshopped image of his dog, Floki, as CEO.
And while it may
seem unconventional to many, Musk said he sleeps at the Twitter headquarters
in San Francisco sometimes. "There's a library nobody goes to on the seventh
floor and there's a couch there and sometimes I sleep there," he said.
This habit is not new to Musk, who was known for sleeping at
Tesla headquarters often. After showing "CBS Mornings'" Gayle King his sleep
set-up at Tesla in 2018 – a bench in a conference room – a GoFundMe was
created to "buy Elon a couch." That same year, he told the New York Times he
worked up to 120 hours a week and sometimes takes Ambien to get to
sleep.
In speaking with BBC News, Musk said he doesn't sleep at
Twitter five days a week because he isn't at the headquarters five days a
week. He also runs Tesla and SpaceX and is one of the richest men in the
world. Musk also has nine living children, only two of whom are legally
adults, with three women.
Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion,
selling many of his Tesla shares to be able to do so, which he told BBC News
he did not want to have to do.
After taking over, Musk promptly
laid off a large portion of Twitter's workforce – about 7,500 people – but
said it didn't hurt Twitter's functionality. He said the people who
predicted that it would cease to work because so many engineers left are
clearly wrong. "We're on Twitter right now," he said, referring to the
Twitter Spaces platform.
He claimed the mass layoffs were "one
of the hardest things" he's had to do. "Not fun at all. Painful," he said,
adding that Twitter now has just 1,500 employees.
Former employees sued Musk over the terminations, with some
alleging he went back on promises he made about his takeover and at least
one saying he did not receive proper notification of the layoffs, which
violates California laws, according to CBS News Bay Area.
Musk
wrote brash comments and mocked laid-off employees on Twitter, including an
employee from Iceland named Haraldur Thorleifsson, an entrepreneur whose
company was acquired by Twitter who said he was laid off without warning
before being terminated. Thorleifsson — who uses a wheelchair because of
muscular dystrophy and was named Iceland's person of the year last year for
his philanthropic efforts, including building wheelchair ramps across the
country — asked for clarity from Musk.
Musk replied: "The
reality is that this guy (who is independently wealthy) did no actual work,
claimed as his excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from
typing, yet was simultaneously tweeting up a storm. Can't say I have a lot
of respect for that," Musk wrote.
He later apologized for that
comment, writing: "It was based on things I was told that were untrue or, in
some cases, true, but not meaningful," Musk said.
Musk often shares tweets that some find controversial or
outlandish and he admitted he has shot himself in the foot "with tweets
multiple times."
"I think I should not tweet after 3 a.m.," he
said. "If you're going to tweet something that maybe is controversial, save
it as a draft then look at it the next day and see if you still want to
tweet it."
He also admitted the criticism he receives is taxing,
adding that he doesn't have a "stone-cold heart."
"If you're
under constant attack and that's getting fed to you nonstop, including
through Twitter, that's tough," he said of the mean tweets and criticism
he's received. He said, however, the feedback is sometimes necessary, so he
doesn't mute his mentions, or tweets where people mention his Twitter
handle.
On the topic of banning TikTok, Musk said he doesn't use it but
he's heard people regret most of their time spent on the video app, which is
under scrutiny for its privacy and data policies and is being investigated
by the federal government. "We don't want regretted time, we want
un-regretted time, where you learn things," he said. "I get more laughs out
of Twitter than anything else and many people tell me the same thing. So
that's a good thing."
