Musk paid $44 billion to acquire Twitter, and all indications are that the platform isn’t worth anything close to that. Once he got access to the company’s finances, the Tesla boss realized it was losing millions of dollars every day, and that many of its employees weren’t doing much work at all. So he proceeded to do what most executives would do in this situation: He laid off some of his workers.
“Tech companies ran off the cliff long ago.”
The abrupt firing of thousands of employees solicited a new wave of outrage from Musk’s haters. But even if you remove him from the equation, Twitter couldn’t have gone much longer without massive layoffs. The same thing is happening across Silicon Valley. Last week, the online payments company Stripe announced it would cut 14% of its workforce, as did the rideshare giant Lyft; Facebook parent company Meta looks poised to do the same. Like Wile E. Coyote, tech companies ran off the cliff long ago; only now is economic gravity starting to assert itself.
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In an earlier column, I ended with the following question: “Gen. Mark Milley infamously testified before a congressional hearing that he wanted to understand ‘white rage.’ But who right now is prepared for progressive, multiracial, demisexual rage, as the core social groups driving progressivism in America are hit the hardest by layoffs and the end of Silicon Valley subsidies?” That rage is no longer coming—it’s here.
As Kristi Noem tweeted when CNN+ tanked in April:
