On Monday, Elon Musk and software engineer Eric Frohnhoefer engaged in a Twitter argument that resulted in Musk declaring “he’s fired” and Frohnhoefer admitting he had been denied access to Twitter’s internal systems. After Frohnhoefer tweeted evidence showing Musk was “wrong” about his claims that Twitter was operating, in the billionaire’s words, “very slowly,” in numerous countries, the public termination followed.
Frohnhoefer claimed to have received word of the firing from a friend who forwarded him Musk’s tweet on Monday night, and said that “no one even reached out to me from Twitter.” Frohnhoefer went on to say that while he had been “ready to give it a go” under Musk and that he was “in the wait-and-see camp,” “everything that has been published is true,” he added. He called working for Musk a “complete sh*t show” and said the situation is “chaos” right now.
On Tuesday morning, at least one other employee who offered context on the matter had also been fired. And a few other Twitter workers claimed on the site on Tuesday that they had received an email informing them that their “behavior has violated company policy,” with some speculating that the action may have been in response to remarks they had made in private Slack channels. Employees have recently been very vocal about Musk on the company’s Slack channel.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to the news of Tuesday’s layoffs with a tweet that read, “I’m sorry I let these smart people go. Undoubtedly, someone else will benefit greatly from her enormous talent.”
The firing of the majority of Twitter’s contractors and the cutting of half its personnel have been ascribed to Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk’s retaliatory against people who disagree with his viewpoints.
