Twitter is going through a chaotic week.
Both from a technical point of view, with two global falls in less than a week, and in terms of its internal management.
The latest wave of layoffs, last week, affected more than 10% of employees still
surviving after brutal cuts in recent months.
But Elon Musk takes no prisoners in his quest to make Twitter viable at all costs.
The latest controversy starring the tycoon has as its victim Halli Thorleifsson, an Icelandic designer who has been trying to access Twitter's internal system for days
without success.
After not receiving any notification from the human resources department and fearing the worst, Thorleifsson decided to ask the company's CEO directly through the social network.
"9 days ago they restricted my access, along with
200 other Twitter employees
. The HR department is not able to confirm if I am an employee. You have not answered my emails. Maybe if many people retweet me, you will answer me?", it said the tweet.
After a few hours, the tycoon responded with another question: "What job have you been doing?"
The designer then told him that to make this information public "he would have to
break confidentiality
."
With Musk's approval, Thorleifsson made a list of the different tasks that he carried out within the company.
The Tesla owner also replied that without images as proof of his work, that would never have happened.
"We haven't hired design positions in 4 months," he added in her response, joining her
shortly after a movie scene in meme form.
Incendiary reactions against Musk
Musk's attitude was repudiated on Twitter.
Photo Reuters
The conversation
did not take long to receive all kinds of reactions
and responses.
Shortly after, Musk deleted some of his tweets, and
Alex Cohen,
a former Twitter employee, shared a screenshot of the entire conversation.
It was then that the tycoon wanted to give his version of the facts.
"The reality is that this guy (who is independently wealthy) didn't do any real work, he claimed as an excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from typing, but at the same time he was tweeting. I can't say I have much respect for him for that. ", replied the CEO.
"
But he was fired
? No, you can't get fired if you weren't working in the first place!" he added.
Everything seems to indicate that Houghton's comment made Musk reflect, who stated that after his intervention he made "a video call with Halli to find out what is real and what they told him."
An hour later he publicly apologized for her "misinterpretation of her situation."
In addition, the CEO assured that the Icelander
"is considering staying on Twitter."
Thorleifsson came to the company shortly after it acquired his company in 2020, with a management role that did not require him to spend too many hours on the computer.
Apart from his role as an entrepreneur, Halli is a prominent philanthropist in Iceland and in 2022 he was named "Person of the Year" for his project to improve the accessibility of public spaces
for people in wheelchairs.
Source: La Vanguardia