Elon Musk Uses Twitter to Humiliate Fired Employee: ‘Guy Did No Actual Work’

So that happened: A Twitter employee who was unsure of whether he’d been laid off or not resorted to tweeting at CEO Elon Musk on Monday night, who responded by conducting a public exit interview during which he mocked the ex-staffer and tried to justify not paying him.

After the thread picked up steam, Musk tweeted(Opens in a new window): “But was he fired? No, you can’t be fired if you weren’t working in the first place!”

The ex-employee, Haraldur Thorleifsson, is based in Iceland and began working at Twitter in 2021 after the social media platform bought his company Ueno to help it design new products. But over a week ago, Thorleifsson’s corporate access to Twitter was cut off after the company conducted another set of layoffs.  

The only problem? Thorleifsson said Twitter’s human resources department was unable to confirm whether he still worked at the company, making it unclear if he had been let go or not. So on Monday, he tweeted(Opens in a new window) at Musk, hoping for an answer. 

In his reply, Musk asked Thorleifsson what he did at the company. Thorleifsson then listed all his efforts to improve design at Twitter and cut costs. Musk, however, was skeptical and dismissive. At one point, he responded(Opens in a new window) with crying laughing emojis. In another reply, Musk posted(Opens in a new window) a scene from the 1999 film Office Space, which shows two consultants interviewing an employee who struggles to justify his position at the company. 

Amid this back and forth, Twitter’s HR department reached out to Thorleifsson to confirm he had indeed been fired, Thorleifsson says.

“Which is totally ok and it happens all the time. Companies let people go, that’s within their rights,” he wrote. However, Thorleifsson is now asking(Opens in a new window) if Twitter will pay him what he’s owed on his contract. “Or, will @elonmusk, one of the richest people in the world, try to avoid paying?” Thorleifsson added.

Musk is leaning toward the latter. “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,” Musk tweeted(Opens in a new window).

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The episode comes as Musk has been cutting costs to engineer a financial turnaround at the cash-strapped company. However, a growing number of third-party vendors are accusing Twitter of refusing to pay its bills. 

In response to Musk’s tweet, Thorleifsson said he has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair. “I can however write for an hour or two at a time,” he added. “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.”

He’s posted his own tweet thread(Opens in a new window) going over his condition while mocking Musk’s reported(Opens in a new window) requirement of bringing bodyguards everywhere to Twitter’s offices, including to the bathroom.

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