Zuckerberg on Musk cutting 80% of Twitter staff: He set an example for the whole industry

Why is it that after Musk cut 80% of Twitter's staff in one stroke, the big Silicon Valley companies didn't laugh at him but instead collectively began going after their own middle managers? Zuckerberg revealed in the Lex Fridman interview that many founders had long wanted to flatten their organizations and shorten the distance between themselves and engineers, but Musk took the first step that no one dared to take for the whole industry. In the Lex Fridman podcast, Zuckerberg reviewed the storm of Musk cutting 80% of Twitter's staff after taking over, and admitted outright that Musk set an example for all of Silicon Valley. He even said directly that many founders had long felt this was the right way to change things, but no one had dared to act first. In the conversation, he broke Musk's seemingly crude layoffs down into three very specific organizational principles: increase the company's density of technical talent, flatten management layers outright, and shorten the reporting distance between frontline engineers and the CEO as much as possible. Normally when big companies cut costs and improve efficiency, the default move is to spread quotas proportionally across departments and dutifully cut a batch of frontline programmers and business staff. As a result, the work doesn't decrease, but the reporting layers that pass messages along remain untouched. But Zuckerberg pointed out the most counterintuitive part of Musk's cut: laying off 80% of the people was never about saving on wages, but about uprooting the message-relayers standing between the boss and the engineers, which is also why when Zuckerberg himself sent an all-hands letter in March promoting the year of efficiency, the core move was to make middle managers get back to writing code and turn managers of managers into engineers of engineers. It's like clearing a silted-up river: scooping water downstream is useless; you have to remove the gates stacked up in the middle so the water can flow again, Even though Musk took all the criticism from the outside world, when the whole world found that Twitter's servers could still run with 80% fewer people, the tech industry's illusion about organizational size shattered on the spot. Put simply, this is a very clear signal for everyone today who leads a team, does business, or writes code at a company, AI combined with minimalist organizations is completely washing coordination roles that survive purely on information gaps off the table, In the future, the foundation for a person's standing in an organization won't be how many layers of people you manage, but how close you are to the real code and real product delivery. Still, when listening to two top bosses praise each other across the airwaves, one should stay clear-headed. From the standpoint of founders and Wall Street shareholders, cutting middle managers and raising per-person efficiency is of course a sure-win deal, but in the early days of Twitter's mass layoffs, it did pay a heavy price with advertiser loss and halted compliance reviews. Ordinary companies don't have Musk's risk tolerance, and blindly copying shock therapy can easily cut the company's main business artery. Previously, big companies competed on who could build an organization like an airtight pyramid; now they compete on who dares to be the first to tear down the load-bearing middle https://t.co/4oq6cSYeFd

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为什么马斯克一刀裁掉推特 80% 的员工后，硅谷大厂非但没看他笑话，反而集体开始拿自家中层开刀？ 小扎在 Lex Fridman 访谈里交了个底，他说很多创始人心里早想把组织拍扁、缩短自己和工程师的距离，只是老马替全行业迈出了没人敢走的第一步。 小扎在 Lex Fridman 播客里复盘马斯克接手推特后大砍 80% 员工的那场风暴，亲口承认老马给整个硅谷打了个样，他甚至直言，很多创始人心里早觉得该这么改，只是以前没人敢先动手。 他在对谈里把老马看似粗暴的裁员拆成了三条极具体的组织原则，提高公司的技术人才密度，把管理层级直接拍扁，尽可能缩短一线工程师和 CEO 之间的汇报距离。 平时大厂做降本增效，默认动作是各个部门按比例平摊名额，老老实实砍掉一批一线干活的程序员和业务员，结果活没少干，中间传话的汇报层却纹丝不动。 但小扎点破了老马这刀最反直觉的地方，砍掉 80% 的人从来不是为了省那点工资， 而是为了把横在老板和工程师之间的传话筒连根拔起， 这也是为什么小扎自己在 3 月份发全员信推效率年时，核心动作就是让中层管理者重新下场写代码，把管理者的管理变成了工程师的工程师。 这就像清理一条淤塞的河道，你光在下游舀水没用，必须把中间层层设卡的闸门拆掉，水流才能重新跑起来， 老马哪怕吃尽了外界的骂名，但当全世界发现推特少掉八成人服务器依然能转时，整个科技圈关于组织规模的幻觉就当场破灭了。 说白了，这对今天所有在公司带团队、做业务或者写代码的人都是一个极清醒的信号， AI 和极简组织叠在一起，正在把纯粹靠信息差活着的协调型岗位彻底洗出牌桌， 未来一个人在组织里安身立命的根本，不在于你手底下管着几层人，而在于你离真实的代码、真实的产品交付到底有多近。 不过听两位顶流老板隔空商业互吹时也得留个清醒，站在创始人和华尔街股东的立场，砍掉中层、拉高人效当然是稳赚不赔的买卖， 但推特大裁员初期确实付出了广告商流失和合规审核停摆的惨重代价，普通企业没有老马那种抗风险底气，盲目照抄休克疗法很容易直接把业务大动脉给切断。 以前大厂拼的是谁能把组织搭得像座密不透风的金字塔，现在拼的是谁敢先动手拆掉中间的承重 https://t.co/4oq6cSYeFd