Twitter Inc.’s owner, Elon Musk, who calls himself a “free-speech autocrat,” fired the company’s engineers who publicly criticized him on the service. social media.
Twitter Inc.’s owner, Elon Musk, who calls himself a “free-speech autocrat,” fired the company’s engineers who publicly criticized him on the service. social media.
In one case, Musk announced the layoffs in a tweet. In another case, the former employee said he was fired after publicly rebuking Musk.
Engineer Eric Frohnhoefer, who has worked on Twitter’s app for the Android mobile operating system, on Sunday retweeted one of Musk’s tweets with a comment, saying Musk’s understanding of the part is in The technicalities of the Twitter app are “wrong”. Musk responded and asked Frohnhoefer to explain further, before writing, “Twitter is incredibly slow on Android. What did you do to fix that?”
After trying to explain his thoughts in several tweets, Frohnhoefer was asked by another user why he didn’t share his feedback with his new boss privately. The engineer, who has worked at Twitter for more than eight years, replied: “Maybe he should ask the question privately. Can use Slack or email.”
On Monday morning, Musk wrote that Frohnhoefer had been fired. Frohnhoefer retweeted that post and included a welcome emoji that many employees used when they were laid off earlier this month. Twitter and Frohnhoefer did not immediately respond to requests for comment on his status.
Another engineer, Ben Leib, was also fired after criticizing Musk. He retweeted the same technical post from Musk, writing: “As the former tech lead for timeline infrastructure at Twitter, I can confidently say this man has no idea what he’s doing. talk about something.” Leib, who has worked at Twitter for a decade, confirmed to Bloomberg that he was fired on Sunday.
Twitter has been plunged into chaos since Musk took over late last month. Many workers were still upset when Musk fired half of the company’s more than 7,000 employees, including most senior managers, within about a week of the $44 billion acquisition.
The billionaire also quickly changed the corporate culture. While it was not customary for employees to openly challenge leadership on Twitter in the past, employees often spoke up on internal Slack channels and via email before Musk appeared, sometimes posting reprimands. quotes or concerns for the entire company.
Musk’s changes have resulted in a lack of internal communication about who’s in charge and what the company’s priorities are, current and former employees said.
The moves also led to concerns that San Francisco-based Twitter is prone to product failures or technical outages. On Monday, Twitter rolled out another encryption freeze, halting product updates for the app, and employees didn’t give a clear reason why.
