Billionaire Elon Musk is running Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) with an ever-shrinking fraction of the staff the company had when he took over. The layoffs have been fast, furious, and poorly communicated.
As a result, Haraldur Thorleifsson, a senior director at Twitter, based in Reykjavik, Iceland tweeted at Musk on Monday evening saying he lost his laptop access nine days prior and didn’t know if he was still employed.
“Dear @elonmusk 9 days ago the access to my work computer was cut, along with about 200 other Twitter employees,” Thorleifsson said on Twitter.
“However your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am an employee or not. You've not answered my emails. Maybe if enough people retweet you'll answer me here?”
Dear @elonmusk ????
9 days ago the access to my work computer was cut, along with about 200 other Twitter employees.
However your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am an employee or not. You've not answered my emails.
Maybe if enough people retweet you'll answer me here?
— Halli (@iamharaldur) March 6, 2023
Thorleifsson, a creative designer and father of two, founded a creative agency, Ueno, which was acquired by Twitter in 2021. He sold his company to Twitter as his muscular dystrophy condition was growing acute. He started using a wheelchair almost two decades ago when he was 25.
"What work have you been doing?" snarked Musk in response to Thorleifsson’s question about his employment status.
Thorleifsson told Musk that it would break his confidentiality agreement if he talked publicly about what work he had completed.
Musk breezily responded that he had permission so Thorleifsson listed several achievements and work milestones.
“Pics or it didn’t happen,” Musk retorted. Then Musk replied to himself with a YouTube clip of a firing scene from Office Space.
“To be clear. You have every right to lay me off. That's totally fair and fine,” Thorleifsson said in response. "But usually, people are told when that happens. Maybe with a letter or something. Which didn't happen for 9 days despite multiple emails to you and others.”
Shockingly, Musk then responded to a thread criticizing him for how he handled the lay-off, by mocking Thorleifsson for being disabled.
“The reality is that this guy (who is independently wealthy) did no actual work, claimed as his excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from typing, yet was simultaneously tweeting up a storm,” Musk harrumphed on Twitter.
The reality is that this guy (who is independently wealthy) did no actual work, claimed as his excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from typing, yet was simultaneously tweeting up a storm.
Can’t say I have a lot of respect for that.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 7, 2023
After the Twitter duel with Musk, Thorleifsson detailed on the social media platform how his legs were the first to go but in time the rest of his body has been failing him too.
“I'm not able to do manual work (which in this case means typing or using a mouse) for extended periods of time without my hands starting to cramp,” he said. “I can however write for an hour or two at a time. This wasn't a problem in Twitter 1.0 since I was a senior director and my job was mostly to help teams move forward, give them strategic and tactical guidance.”
Contact the author Uttara Choudhury at uttara@proactiveinvestors.com
Follow her on Twitter: @UttaraProactive