Twitter CEO Elon Musk on Tuesday laughed at an employee who was unaware of current status in the social media company which is trying hard to stabilize after several rounds of layoffs saw more than two thirds of staff let go. Haraldur Thorleifsson, who, as per his Facebook profile, has been working at Twitter since February 2021, posted his grievance on the micro-blogging platform saying he could no longer access his work computer. He further stated that the head of Human Resources (HR) was also not able to confirm if he was still an employee.
“Dear Elon Musk, 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,” he tweeted. “Maybe if enough people retweet you’ll answer me here?”
This triggered a response from Elon Musk who asked Thorleifsson about his job profile. The employee said answering the question on Twitter would require breaking the confidentiality clause.
“If you have your lawyers share in writing that I can do that then I’d be happy to discuss that openly!” he said.
To this, Musk replied, “It’s approved, you go ahead”
Thorleifsson went on to disclose his job profile and the specific work he was doing at Twitter.
Musk, without letting Thorleifsson know about his employment status, laughed at him using emojis, in an apparent indication that he has been sacked.
While some Twitter users saw it as a brutal but witty response, many termed it nauseating.
“No, @elonmusk this is not good response from a leader. Also it doesn’t seem right to not provide clarity to employees about their termination. Those of us who love you should also be able to speak to you truthfully,” wrote a Twitter user with handle @HaedolGroup.
Another Twitter user @cherthedev said, “This is sociopathic behavior, honestly.”
On Monday, Twitter suffered a brief but unprecedented outage with users worldwide reporting they could no longer read links to articles from outside websites. Experts say Twitter is running on a skeleton staff, leaving the platform vulnerable to outages as well as disinformation and harmful content given the fewer numbers to keep the site up and running, reported AFP.