Elon Musk cut about half of Twitter's 7,500 employees during his first week as owner, before ChatGPT launched publicly. His ownership group had paid roughly $44 billion for the company, and he reported Twitter was losing more than $4 million a day.

Example: Waiting one year at $4 million a day meant watching about $1.46 billion disappear. The owner held all the upside and downside.

Most executives do not own the upside and the loss in the same way. Their incentive system rewards incremental, reliable progress, not dramatic, high-risk change.

Example: The leader who attempts to cut $200 million at once receives capped upside and uncapped career risk. Success becomes next year's baseline.

A 10–15% annual reduction in workforce is an excellent corporate result. This approach sustains a path to a smaller organization over a decade, rather than facing the acute risks of rapid change.

Example: A 15% improvement on a business unit with $500 million in controllable annual cost creates $75 million in recurring benefit. This supports a favorable board discussion and leaves room for future improvements.

A company continuing to run does not prove it is healthy, safe, or creating durable value. Rapid change, like that at X, can result in outages, advertiser flight, regulatory scrutiny, and reputational damage.

Example: Amazon uses reduction and management-ratio targets to illustrate efficiency, while Box argues lower-cost work can create more demand and new roles, not just layoffs.