Opinion certainty 3/5 debate potential 2/5

Balmain: Musk's firing of Twitter executives made sweeping layoffs clearly inevitable

Simon Balmain · Elon Musk Laid Me Off At Twitter: Simon Balmain · Nov 9, 2022 · at 8:43

Former Twitter senior community manager Simon Balmain discusses the internal mood collapse inside Twitter immediately following Elon Musk's acquisition in November 2022.

0:00 / 0:41exact quote · 41.7s
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“When I think the real mood shift came On the day that, you know, the deal was closed and he, you know, showed up at the office and fired all the executives. Right. You know, these are incredible people that, that, you know, most people in the company have had some kind of interaction with one way or another, depending, you know, obviously what department you're in and to have that sort of chain of command, just like broken at that level was It was horrible to see, and I think at that point we knew that, you know, these big layoffs were pretty much inevitable.”

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Prediction Not checkable as stated
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