Twitter chief Elon Musk publicly fired an engineer who had worked on the social media platform for years after he pointed out how Musk’s assumptions were wrong.
The billionaire took to Twitter to apologize for the slowness of the app in several countries. He said the microblogging platform was “doing >1000 bad batch RPCs just to serve timelines”.
Eric Frohnhofer, a developer who has worked on Twitter for Android for years, said on Twitter that Musk’s guess was wrong. In response, Tesla’s CEO asked Frohnhoefer what the correct figures were and what steps the engineers had taken to fix the problems.
Since the debate was public on Twitter, people started reacting to the tweets and also posted many memes.
Some developers supported the Android developer while others said he should have told his boss “privately” about the issues. However, Frohnhoefer said Musk should have asked privately.
“Maybe they ask questions privately. Maybe using Slack or email.”
Maybe he should ask questions privately. Maybe using Slack or email. 🤷♂️
— Eric Frohnhoefer @ 🏡 (@EricFrohnhoefer) November 14, 2022
“True, he brought it to the public first,” one netizen commented.
As the chaos continued, one user tagged Musk and asked him if he wanted “that kind of attitude” with his team.
Musk, who is known to be very active on social media, responded to the thread saying “he’s fired”. The developer responded with a greeting emoji and changed his Twitter bio to now read: “Android developer open to new opportunities. First @twitter.”
Interestingly, Musk’s tweet was deleted after a few hours.
The SpaceX CEO has made many controversial moves since acquiring Twitter in his famous $44 billion deal. He reportedly fired 90 percent of the Indian staff. In India, the company has just over 200 employees, with this major cut leaving it with just over a dozen employees, a Bloomberg report said. Musk also ended remote work for employees who expected them to work only from the office.
It also introduced a subscription for verified handles, charging accounts $8. Musk, known for his sense of humor, banned parody accounts and killed “official” checks for prominent figures and organizations.
Twitter staff reported working 80 hours a week to complete assigned tasks on given deadlines. Some said they had to sleep on the office floor because they could not go home due to their workload.
Some of the changes were rolled back by the billionaire, who said on Twitter that the platform would have a lot of “dumb bugs.” “We will keep what works and change what doesn’t,” he wrote.
Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 9, 2022
We will keep what works & change what doesn’t.
n Monday, he shared that he had “too much work” on his “plate”, adding that he was working morning till night, “seven days a week”.
