Elon Musk says laying off 80% of Twitter's staff was 'painful' and 'one of the hardest things' he's had to do as the platform's boss

• Elon Musk said laying off nearly 6,500 people at Twitter was "painful" and difficult for him.
• He told the BBC's James Clayton on Tuesday that it was "one of the hardest things" he's had to do.

Elon Musk said laying off the bulk of Twitter's staff in the last six months was "one of the hardest things" he's had to do since taking ownership of the company.

The billionaire spoke to the BBC's James Clayton on Tuesday evening in a wide-ranging live interview on Twitter Spaces, during which Musk talked about his management of Twitter and beliefs on free speech.

Musk said the company had around 7,800 staff when he took over the platform in November. Twitter now employs 1,500 people, Musk told the BBC.

"Has it been hard letting that many people go?" Clayton asked.

"Yeah," Musk answered immediately.

"Not fun at all. Painful," Musk continued after a brief pause.

Clayton asked Musk if he felt he or a manager needed to speak personally to laid-off employees. Many former Twitter employees caught in Musk's mass layoffs at the end of 2022 said they only discovered they lost their jobs when Twitter abruptly locked them out of their laptops.

"It's not physically possible to speak to that many people," Musk told Clayton.

Clayton asked if the mass layoffs were "one of the hardest things emotionally" for Musk.

"It's one of the hardest things, certainly," Musk responded.

The billionaire said Twitter had "four months to live" when he took the company's helm and that the mass layoffs were a "drastic," necessary measure to stem a "$3 billion negative cash flow situation."

The Twitter CEO spent the rest of the interview talking about his Shiba Inu, Floki, his desire to turn the Twitter office into a homeless shelter, and his thoughts on political discourse. He also challenged Clayton and the BBC on their definitions of misinformation and observations of hate speech on Twitter.

Musk did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment sent outside regular business hours. Twitter's press department responded to Insider's request for comment with an automated response.