Being an employee on Twitter feels like a dangerous game now, seeing as Elon Musk has fired employees once again. The tech billionaire appears to be on a rampage lately, culling the herd that is Twitter's workforce. According to Gizmodo, Musk has taken the jobs of the employees who were talking about him in an unflattering manner. That's on top of the recent layoff of thousands of contract workers.
Thou Shall Not Talk Smack About Elon
The Tesla CEO has an eye on the platform's internal Slack channels, which is unfortunate for those who decided to criticize him. Musk acts fast, seeing as the workers in question were fired overnight. Employees have claimed that around 20 were fired due to their comments on Slack. Musk tweeted saying that he wanted to apologize for firing the geniuses and that their talents would be of use elsewhere. This was mentioned in a Tweet by Casey Newton, the founder of Platformer.
NEW: Employees who have criticized Elon Musk in Twitter’s Slack channels were fired overnight over email.
— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) November 15, 2022
“We regret to inform you that your employment is terminated immediately,” they’re being told over email. “Your recent behavior has violated company policy.”
A few employees took to Twitter, expressing how they have been fired after many years of employment. One of these former employees was Nick Morgan, the software engineer whose role was tech lead for Tweet Service. Morgan worked for Twitter for 11 years. He posted the email he received on Twitter, which states that the termination of employment is immediate, saying that their behavior has violated company policy. He also stated that it was due to not showing complete loyalty on Slack.
Sasha Solomon, the co-tech of Twitter's core API platform team and a software engineer has also been sacked. She claims that she too was fired for speaking about the boss negatively, and proceeded to do so saying "kiss my ass Elon" on Twitter. Another engineer, Jesse Feinman, also tweeted saying that it was the best way to go.
It does not end there. It seems that working for the platform for over a decade does not hold any guarantee. Aside from Morgan, @thinkingfish stated that she too has worked for 12 years in the company, and was also fired. Although, she said that she never thought she would stay that long, and that she was relieved to be fired.
CEO of Free Speech
It's rather funny that the former staff are venting on the platform that used to employ them. Then again, is Elon Musk not an advocate of free speech? I guess not in some cases. Musk tweeted on November 14th, saying that the app is running slow in many countries. He reasoned that the app is doing than less than 1000 poorly batched RPCs, just for rendering a home timeline.
Eric Frohnhoefer quoted the tweet, saying that he worked on Twitter Android for six years, and that what was happening was wrong. A Twitter user then replied, saying that Musk wouldn't like the guy on his team because of his attitude. Musk replied with a now now-deleted Tweet expressing that he has been fired.
Before the first round of layoffs, employees were reminding each other to keep their heads down and out of the way of Musk.
— Tim Onion (@oneunderscore__) November 14, 2022
If they got laid off, they'd get severance. But if they pushed back against Elon? They'd get fired. No severance.
Very normal work environment. pic.twitter.com/o9dQAHJCPn
