Update: Elon Musk apologized to the employee, calling his criticism of him a misunderstanding. Original story below:
Twitter CEO Elon Musk appeared to mock one of his former employees on the platform Monday evening using a clip from the comedy movie “Office Space,” suggesting that the employee did not add real value to the company.
“Dear @elonmusk 👋 9 days ago the access to my work computer was cut, along with about 200 other Twitter employees,” Haraldur Thorleifsson tweeted at Musk. “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?”
“What work have you been doing?” Musk asked.
“I would need to break confidentiality to answer this question here,” Thorleifsson responded. “If you have your lawyers share in writing that I can do that then I’d be happy to discuss that openly!”
“It’s approved, you go ahead,” Musk responded.
It’s approved, you go ahead
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 7, 2023
Thorleifsson responded by rattling off a list of things he claimed that he accomplished, including:
- Led the effort to save about $500k on one SaaS contract. Supported closing down many others
- Led prioritization of design projects across the company to make sure we were able to deliver with a small team
- Led design crits to help level up design across the company
- Was hiring manager for all design roles
- Worked on efforts to steer the company away from focusing on power users and on to younger users (because our user base is aging)
Thorleifsson then continued by saying that the head of human resources “just miraculously” replied to him and confirmed “that I no longer work at Twitter!!”
Musk responded to his list of claims by asking questions and suggesting that some of his assertions were false.
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“Which SaaS contract exactly?” Musk asked. “Prioritization of what design projects?”
“Level up from what design to what?” Musk asked. “Pics or it didn’t happen.”
“We haven’t hired design roles in 4 months,” he continued. “What changes did you make to help with the youths?”
Musk then tweeted out a clip from “Office Space” where an employee is asked what he actually does for the company and proceeds to have a meltdown.
Would you say that you’re a people person?https://t.co/kLD9NWHVIT
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 7, 2023
“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 said. “Can’t say I have a lot of respect for that.”
“But was he fired? No, you can’t be fired if you weren’t working in the first place!” he added.
But was he fired? No, you can’t be fired if you weren’t working in the first place!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 7, 2023