Elon Musk says running Twitter has been “painful” and stressful

Elon Musk has described running Twitter as “quite painful,” and a “stressful situation.” The sizable workload Musk has taken on has even pushed him to sleep on a couch in the office’s library, he says.

The Tesla CEO purchased Twitter last year in a reported $44 billion dollar deal. Since then the social media website has undergone a multitude of changes under his leadership.

Many of these changes were made to turn around Twitter’s financial situation with it not declaring a profit since 2019. However, the man behind these decisions hasn’t made them without hardship.

Elon Musk opens up about his time as Twitter CEO

Elon Musk has revealed how running Twitter has affected his life in an interview with the BBC. In the interview, Musk describes his time at Twitter as “painful,” with the layoffs earlier this year being a particular low point.

Speaking on the layoffs, Musk confessed they were “haphazard,” but still defended the decision to go ahead with them: “The company was going to go bankrupt if we didn’t cut costs immediately. If the whole ship sinks then nobody’s got a job.”

Despite the stressful situation Musk finds himself in, he wouldn’t commit to saying that buying Twitter was a mistake: “It’s been quite painful but at the end of the day it should have been done. Were there many mistakes along the way? Of course, but all well that ends well.”

Twitter’s situation is improving

The situation as of late looks to have improved, as Musk expressed: “We’re headed to a good place. We’re roughly breaking even and trending to be cash flow positive very soon. Literally in a matter of months.”

A part of these improvements to finances can be attributed to advertisers returning to Twitter. Musk backed this sentiment: “I think almost all advertisers have come back or said they are going to come back.”

Addressing the advertisers that haven’t returned yet, Musk said: “If Disney feels comfortable advertising children’s movies and Apple feels comfortable advertising iPhones that’s a good indicator that Twitter is a good place to advertise.”

With Twitter’s fortune changing Musk isn’t actively looking to sell Twitter but he did concede that such an outcome isn’t impossible: “If I was confident that they would rigorously pursue the truth, then I guess I would be glad to hand it over to someone else.”