The balance on Twitter is shifting, 17 November 2022

Famously, Elon Musk of SpaceX and Tesla fame has purchased Twitter.  As part of his plan to remake the corporation, he announced a plan to lay-off 3/4ths of the staff.  Not a typo, that is 75% of the people to be fired. Oh, that is bad, said public perception.  In a thoughtful moment, Elon backed off and laid off "only" half.  Not a typo, that is 50% were fired within about three (3) weeks.  I am not sure how he expected to keep the company running after that, but Twitter has not fallen over.

Once all the fuss about the lay-offs died down, Elon imposed a sudden work-from-office requirement:  40 hours per week in the office, minimum.  Although I have concerns about the long-term success of unfettered WFH (work-from-home), that was the Twitter policy and the suddeness of Elon's dictate was extreme.  A target date and time for transition plans would have been reasonable (assuming the target date was into 2023).  

Not content, Elon announced a further 5% trim of staff, another lay-off in which the managers were required to identify a further 5% of the staff as low performers.  Yeah, always a popular move.

Finally, Elon send out an email message that required staff to commit to unpaid overtime, a loyalty oath, and (I suspect) consent to absurd delivery schedules.  Failure to commit was essentially volunteering to get laid off.

As a consequence of any layoff, there are collateral resignations.  The targeted population to be laid off may be the low performers and the low revenue groups (a common assertion), but the untargeted resignations are usually the very people who can get another job quickly.  Those would include your top performers.  The remainder are a mix of the true believers, the ones who are "stuck" (e.g., because of health care), and the inertial.  This is not always the employee base that you would want to retain.

In effect, Elon has now laid off 3/4ths of the Twitter staff and achieved his original intent, except for the "retain top talent" objective.

In compensation, I offer you a photograph of a sleeping cat.