The Twitter layoff saga took another dramatic turn as a former company employee confronted Musk on the social media platform and made the whole public spectacle of an exit interview.
A former Twitter employee named Haraldur Þorleifsson, an Icelandic entrepreneur and philanthropist who founded creative agency Ueno, Tweeted about Musk saying he lost access to his work computer on Twitter and wanted clarification on whether he was still employed by the company or not.
Dear @Elon Musk
9 days ago, access to my work computer was cut off, along with about 200 other Twitter employees.
However, your HR manager is unable to confirm whether I am an employee or not. You haven’t answered my emails.
Maybe if enough people retweet, you’ll reply to me here?
— Halli (@iamharaldur) March 6, 2023
Musk quickly jokingly responded to the former employee, asking “What work did you do?” After several back and forths, the former employee listed a slew of jobs he would have done while working at Twitter.
Musk demanded photographic evidence, and the feud continued before Musk (for his part) was done the exchange with two crying and laughing emojis.
You locked my computer. I don’t have access to any photos or docs. If you want us to open it, I can bring you things.
— Halli (@iamharaldur) March 7, 2023
When exchangingsaid that Twitter’s human resources representative had in fact “miraculously responded” and confirmed that he had been terminated.
The man, who was dubbed Iceland’s ‘Person of the Year’ by several local media outlets for his work improving accessibility for people with disabilities in his country, doubled down at the end and asked Musk whether he was going to be paid in full for his disability after being released.
Things then took an even uglier turn, after Musk responded to a Tweet about another Twitter user’s debacle saying the former employee was “individually wealthy” and “not actually working” and claimed that he had a disability that prevented him from being able to type.
He has a prominent and active Twitter account and he is wealthy. The reason he confronted me in public was to get a big payout.
From what I’m told, he’s hardly worked for the past four months, middle manager or otherwise.
Despite his claims on Twitter that he did… https://t.co/LGuAlg4Eew
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 7, 2023
“Despite his claims on Twitter that he was working, it turns out he told HR he couldn’t work because he couldn’t type, but during the same period he was typing Twitter storm,” Musk wrote. “Yet there are a lot of people on Twitter defending him. It hurts my faith in humanity.”
After seeing this the man took to his own account to call Musk again and explain that he is in a wheelchair due to muscular dystrophy and told his story of how he was diagnosed and how he got sold his company to Twitter in a 17 long threads on tweets.
He also has noted why he chose to confront Musk publicly.
“The reason I asked you in public is that you (or someone else on Twitter) didn’t respond to my private messages,” he said. “You had every right to fire me. But it would have been nice to let me know!
Less than two weeks A few days ago, Musk laid off another 200 Twitter employees, about 10% of the company’s remaining total workforce.
Twitter is now estimated to have less than 2,000 employees.