Twitter was one of the most consequential websites in the world when it was taken over by Elon Musk, but it was hardly the paragon of efficiency.
In a revealing appearance on the All-In podcast, Musk pulled back the curtain on the startling waste he discovered after completing his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in October 2022. Joined by investor Jason Calacanis, who was part of the initial takeover team, Musk painted a picture of an organization where operational bloat had reached almost surreal proportions—from ghost offices staffed only by cleaning crews to cafeterias where food preparers outnumbered actual employees.
The $400 Lunch
The most striking example of inefficiency centered on Twitter’s employee cafeteria. “This is where we discovered that the actual price of the lunch was $400,” Musk recounted. “The original price was $20, but it was at 5% occupancy, so it was 20 times higher, and they still kept making the same amount pretty much and charging the same amount. So effectively lunch was $400.”
Calacanis corroborated the absurdity: “We go to the cafeteria, we all go get something to eat, and we realize there’s more people working in the cafeteria than at Twitter.”
Musk echoed this observation: “There were more people making the food than eating the food. And this giant cafeteria, really nice cafeteria.”
The Empty Building
The waste extended far beyond the cafeteria. Musk described Twitter’s two-building campus in San Francisco, where one building sat virtually abandoned. “There’s the two buildings, two Twitter buildings, and one with literally no one in it. That’s where we had the initial meetings,” he explained.
The emptiness was so complete that basic office supplies had expired from disuse. “We tried drawing on the whiteboard and the markers had gone dry. Nobody had used the whiteboard markers in like two years. None of the markers worked, so we were like, this is totally bizarre.”
Yet the building was immaculately maintained. “But it was totally clean because the cleaning crew had come in and done their job and cleaned an already clean place for, I don’t know, two, three years straight,” Musk said. “Honestly, this is more crazy than any sort of Mike Judge movie or Silicon Valley or anything like that.”
Tampons in the Men’s Room
Perhaps the most emblematic example of unchecked waste involved an automated supply system that nobody had thought to turn off. “I remember going into the men’s bathroom and there’s a table with menstrual hygiene products, refreshed every week,” Musk recalled. “And we’re like, but there’s literally no one in this building.”
The deliveries continued unabated. “The ‘send fresh tampons to the men’s bathroom in the empty building’ had not been turned off. So every week they would put a fresh box of tampons in an empty building for years.”
The Financial Reality and Turnaround
These anecdotes weren’t merely amusing oddities—they represented fundamental financial problems at a company that had struggled with profitability throughout its existence. When Musk took over Twitter in 2022, the company was burning through cash at an alarming rate. Despite being a cultural force with hundreds of millions of users, Twitter had posted a net loss of $221 million in 2021 and was on track for similar losses in 2022.
The company’s cost structure was unsustainable relative to its revenue. With approximately 7,500 employees and operating expenses that included lavish perks, multiple offices with minimal occupancy, and vendor contracts that ran on autopilot, Twitter was spending money far faster than it could generate it. The remote work shift during the pandemic had only exacerbated these inefficiencies, as the company maintained expensive real estate and services for offices that employees had largely abandoned.
Musk’s response was dramatic and controversial. In the weeks following the acquisition, he laid off approximately 80% of Twitter’s workforce, reducing headcount from around 7,500 to roughly 1,500 employees. He eliminated most perks, renegotiated or terminated vendor contracts, and closed offices. The cuts extended beyond personnel—Musk reportedly stopped paying rent on some office spaces and aggressively reduced cloud infrastructure costs.
The approach was brutal but effective from a pure cost-cutting perspective. By early 2023, Musk claimed the company was approaching break-even, a remarkable turnaround from the cash-burning machine he’d inherited.
The question of whether Twitter’s pre-Musk spending was justified depends on perspective. The company’s defenders might argue that the perks and comfortable environment were necessary to attract top-tier Silicon Valley talent in a competitive market. The generous benefits, quality food service, and flexible work arrangements were standard among major tech companies competing for the same engineering talent pool.
Yet Musk’s discoveries suggest that somewhere along the way, reasonable benefits had metastasized into waste. When a building sits empty for years while still receiving full janitorial services and supply deliveries, when cafeteria costs balloon to $400 per meal because nobody thought to adjust for actual usage, the issue transcends “startup culture” or “talent retention” and becomes simple mismanagement.
The Twitter takeover story has become a case study in Silicon Valley excess—a cautionary tale about what happens when growth-at-all-costs mentality collides with the absence of profitability pressure. Whether Musk’s slash-and-burn approach was the right solution remains debated, but few now dispute that the old Twitter had problems that needed solving. The real question is whether, in cutting away the fat, Musk also removed too much muscle—a question that continues to play out as X (formerly Twitter) navigates its post-takeover future.