The question is, who will decide who to fire? And how many of the wrong people to fire will get fired in the process?

Even if that were true the problem with the approach he has taken is that by leaking that you are going to perform swinging cuts, everyone who can get another job immediately starts looking so by the time you actually get around to doing the layoff the team has self-selected and you only have “those two guys” left.

I doubt it because the whole vibe of Musk so far is that the axe will fall on the culture warriors and activists. I think the productive and less political engineers know they are safe.

And the zeitgeist seems to have changed lately - so jobs may not be so easier to come by, especially for employees that may be too political for the employer.

This! Can't believe how most of the discussion misses this point.

As a counterpoint, if you lay off 75% of your workers, you can now pay the remaining 25% three times more salary.

...and be on-call 3x as much.