It's the valuation trap. If twitter was satisfied with a valuation 2-3 orders of magnitude lower than what it is, it would be highly profitable right now.
The question is CAN twitter be satisfied. I'm not talking if the investors, ego, or all those others will be satisfied, can it survive at all?
The question is how many people are actually needed to keep the lights on. One person can read the latest CERT notices every day and decide "we need to upgrade our servers before we are hacked", but from there the upgrade can get hard: how many people are needed to to stage and test the upgrade. How many people are needed to keep the servers running? How many people are needed to ensure that twitter doesn't become a has been unable to keep up with their competition (who presumably is adding new features all the time)?
The above is a complex question. I don't know the answers, so while I lean to agree with those thinking twitter should cut people until they are profitable I can never be entirely sure. Even if twitter took my advice and it worked out I can't be entirely sure their current path (too many people) wouldn't be better in the long term. Or alternatively if they continue on the current path I cannot be sure if cutting people would have been better.
The answer is probably: a lot less. Let's be honest, with the exception of Google, there are very few technology companies (not consulting companies) in the world that actually need 10.000+ employees.
