Elon Musk laughed when asked about Twitter layoffs and said a focus on working hard 'was not Twitter's prior culture' before he took over

• Musk spoke about his "roller coaster" first two months at Twitter on the "All-In Podcast."
• When asked how he decided who to lay off, Musk laughed before saying that "exceptional" staff should stay on.
• Musk said Twitter had around 2,000 staff left, down from 7,500 a year ago.

Elon Musk, who has largely depleted Twitter's workforce since buying the company in late October, laughed when asked about the layoffs on a podcast.

Musk appeared on an episode of the "All-In Podcast" released Saturday, where he spoke about his "roller coaster" first two months at Twitter.

Venture capitalist and podcast cohost Chamath Palihapitiya asked Musk how he decided what "the efficient frontier of employees" needed to be to make Twitter better.

Musk laughed, before turning to David Sacks, who has served as an advisor and close confidante to the tech mogul since he took over Twitter.

"I observed part of this where you basically asked the question, 'who here is critical and who here is exceptional?'" Sachs said.

Musk explained his rationale behind deciding who should stay on at the company: "Anyone who is exceptional at what they do, where the role is critical and they have a positive effect on others, and they are trusted, meaning they've put the company's interests before their own, should stay."

He noted that staff also needed to be "up for working hard," adding that that wasn't part of Twitter's "prior culture."

After Musk's $44 billion takeover deal went through on October 27, he cut around half of the company's workforce. Musk also fired some top execs as well as workers who criticized his leadership of the company.

Remaining employees were given an ultimatum, asking them to commit to Musk's vision for "Twitter 2.0," which he said would involve working "long hours at high intensity," or get laid off.

Other Twitter workers, meanwhile, chose to quit their jobs, saying Musk had changed the company's culture and they were worried about the site's future.

Musk said on Saturday's "All-In Podcast" that Twitter still had around 2,000 staff left, a huge drop compared to the more than 7,500 full-time employees it had at the end of 2021. Musk said that Twitter also had close to 5,000 contractors, who he said were responsible for "almost all" of the site's trust and safety work.

Musk also spoke more generally about his time at the helm of Twitter, saying that it had had "its highs and lows to say the least" but that overall the site "seems to be going in a good direction."

Since taking charge of the company, Musk has changed some of the site's features, such as introducing Tweet view counts and adding blue verification ticks to the list of benefits for Twitter Blue subscribers. He has also reinstated some suspended accounts, such as former president Donald Trump's, and announced sweeping changes to Twitter's content-moderation policies, causing some companies to stop running ads on the site.

Twitter has been hit by multiple lawsuits from laid-off workers alleging wrongdoing.

Musk said earlier this month that he would step down as Twitter's CEO "as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job."

"One of the first things I said after the acquisition closed was like, 'we're gonna make a bunch of mistakes but then we'll try to recover from them quickly,' and that's what we've done and I think we've generally succeeded in recovering from them quickly," Musk said on the "All-In Podcast."

Musk also defended his decision to temporarily suspend the accounts of a number of journalists. Musk has implied that these journalists were suspended "doxing," with some of them reporting on Twitter's suspension of @ElonJet, an account that used publicly-available information to track his jet's whereabouts.

"I think the journalist suspensions were not a mistake," Musk said. "For some reason a bunch of journalists thought they were better than regular than everyone else and that if they engage in doxing and break the rules in various ways that they're not subject to suspension even though your average your average citizen is and I think that's just messed up."