I think more than "dead weight", Musk was trying to get rid of what he deemed a culture problem. Using the dead weight as an excuse he did multiple rounds of pu

I think more than "dead weight", Musk was trying to get rid of what he deemed a culture problem. Using the dead weight as an excuse he did multiple rounds of purges, with "useful" (productive+culture matching) engineers also getting purged in the process as an acceptible loss, only perhaps seeing that as a bit too far later on (recall there were engineers being asked to come back on an individual basis). The purging wasn't a surprise from my perspective of , in the past, seeing CEOs agressively weed out employees who only slightly disagree with them, let alone the "actively plotting"(?) Twitter employees who, you may recall, Musk was pouring over internal conversation logs to find, it seems. And to expound on the main topic, I think what we're seeing is a confluence of the above: using downturn, etc. as an excuse to shed perhaps individuals or groups that are in opposition to the culture the board thinks is useful, drowned out by a total also comprised of some amount of acceptible loss in employees the company wouldn't mind keeping. Watch as some individuals from all of the above are individually asked to rejoin with a pay bump. My two cents.