As Elon Musk Cuts Costs at Twitter, Some Bills Are Going Unpaid

[Kennah]

Source: NY Times

Before Elon Musk bought Twitter last month, the company’s executives had racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel invoices that the social media service planned to pay.

But once Mr. Musk took over the company, he refused to reimburse travel vendors for those bills, current and former Twitter employees said. Mr. Musk’s staff said the services were authorized by the company’s former management and not by him. His staff have since avoided the calls of the travel vendors, the people said.

Mr. Musk has embarked on an enormous cost-cutting campaign since closing his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. He initially slashed half of the company’s 7,500-person work force, fired workers and continued with layoffs as recently as Monday. But he has also conducted a sweeping examination of all types of other costs at the company, instructing staff to review, renegotiate and in some cases not pay Twitter’s outside vendors at all, eight people with knowledge of the matter said.

Mr. Musk and his advisers have trained their sights on computing costs that support Twitter’s underlying infrastructure, travel expenses, software services, real estate and even the company’s normally lavish in-office cafeteria food. Twitter’s spending has dropped, but the moves have spurred complaints from insiders — as well as from some vendors who are owed millions of dollars in back payments.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/22/technology/elon-musk-twitter-cost-cutting.html

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The Trump playbook. Don't pay your bills.