What Elon Musk is doing on Twitter is (quite) like what Steve Jobs did to save Apple

Since Elon Musk completed the purchase of Twitter and became the head of the company, there is not a day that we do not read a news about layoffsnew and controversial functions or some other curious event at the headquarters, such as the employees sleeping in offices. They are, in most cases, events that surprise and outrage in equal measure.

And they are, above all, because of the way in which employees are noticing these drastic changes compared to when Parag Agrawal was in charge. What the South African tycoon is doing, however, is not something new. Maybe he is on Twitter, but not in a big tech. Steve Jobs, in fact, did something similar with Apple.

Steve Jobs, let’s remember, left Apple in 1985 due to differences with John Sculley, who became CEO of the Cupertino firm in 1983. It did return, however, in 1996, when Apple acquired NeXT Software.e, the company that Steve Jobs himself founded during his years away. The purchase, in fact, was made at a time when the company was plummeting to the point of even being on the verge of bankruptcy.

Since then, Jobs, who became CEO in 1997 after the departure of Gil Amelio, he began to take measures that at first glance might seem desperate. These, however, helped turn Apple around and once again make it one of the most valuable companies in the world. These measures include the suspension of projects that Apple had underway at the time and the mass dismissal of more than 4,000 employees.

Elon Musk is not the new Steve Jobs, but they have something important in common

Elon Musk, precisely, is following steps similar to those of Steve Jobs. The also CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, for example, has laid off thousands of employees overnight. It has also started announcing changes to some of the platform’s features, such as the ability for any paying user to get verified.

Of course this Doesn’t mean Musk is the new Steve Jobs, nor that the tycoon is inspired by the steps that the founder of Apple took to save his company. Twitter, moreover, is not in the same situation that Apple was in 1997.

So, while there are interesting parallels – two companies in trouble, whose reins are taken over by a new CEO who breaks with the previous establishment and even fires thousands of employees – these do not necessarily imply that the story will end the same way. form in both cases.

But what about the vision regarding the direction of the company? That is something that Elon Musk does seem to agree with Steve Jobs on. Jobs himself claimed years ago that it was a bad idea to let engineers run a company and that someone was needed with a vision of what the customer really wants. Jobs also assured that, during the change of course at Apple after his arrival, many mistakes would be made, but that they would be detected and fixed.

Elon Musk, interestingly enough, is also making major changes that will, of course, be riddled with bugs. And of controversies. But, despite this, they may be necessary to change the course of his company until it builds what he has been promising for months. Whether the outcome ends up being as successful as Apple’s or not is something that only time can determine.