Threatening to fire 75% of the staff might have been a last ditch attempt to turn public, shareholder, board and/or Parag’s opinion against the deal.

It didn’t work, and I doubt he’ll follow through on it. Otherwise, it’s sure to freeze almost all future initiatives and turn the team into caretakers instead of innovators and I’m not sure what the point of that would be.

Innovations? Initiatives? Like edit button and lengthening strings over 160 characters?

Just look at their Web UI, horribly slow and lagy.

Twitter is horribly bloated and unprofitable company. Several thousands people could be justified if there are sales and profits. 75% is not enough, current people must go, regardless of politics.

It cannot have been a threat to staff because it was never uttered by Elon to the staff. It cannot have been a way to influence public/shareholder sentiment because it was never said in public.

If he ever did say it, it was allegedly said to other investors in a private setting. More than likely it's a fabrication by someone who hates Elon (as unlikely as that sounds) laundered into the media as from an anonymous source.

Another slant, considering the (is this true btw) the rumor he asked engineers to print the last 30 days of code they submitted: he’s signaling “hey if you’re lazy, I’m going to fire you, so go ahead and leave on your own”. Which might just work.

There are tonnes of rumours being spread at the moment so I wouldn't take any of them seriously until they're confirmed.

Except for this one :)

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586108809772089345?s=46...

Edit: apparently this was “trauma / shock actors” (whatever that means) but it was still picked up by CNBC.