I also said if the goal is to rebuild twitters culture in a different mold then this is a way to do it. But it is not about identifying the 10%, it’s about identifying the people who map to the intended culture. That’s fine too. But they are driving away the force multipliers by doing this, and creating a reputation that will drive them away. That’s because force multipliers necessarily love the people individually they work with. They aren’t making the cold calculations you’re talking about, and they are generally repulsed by them. And you can’t have an excellent engineering culture based on mercenaries.
You don’t have to believe me. This is just my observations after decades of being involved in these things directly and being the one making the cold calculations.
This is why most of us could never be in the kind of position like Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. They see things for what they are and make the cold calculations. They still make mistakes but are directionally correct.
Power laws like the Pareto principle assert themselves unless you actively push against them. Twitter was not. Everyone knew they were overstaffed for years. The 50% cut when Elon took over had little effect. They were not a lean machine where the 90% were pulling the weight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle