- By James Clayton
- North America’s Technology Reporter
Halli Thorleifsson
A Twitter employee has appealed to Elon Musk on the platform to ask if he had been fired.
In a tweet to the company’s CEO, Halli Thorleifsson said: “Your HR manager cannot confirm whether I am employed or not”.
Mr Musk responded by asking: “What work have you done?”
Thorleifsson told the BBC that nine days after being frozen from Twitter’s accounts, he did not know whether he had been fired or not.
After a series of follow-up questions and answers with Musk, which sounded like a live interview for his job, Thorleifsson said he received an email confirming he had been fired.
Twitter did not immediately respond to the BBC’s request for comment.
Thorleifsson, 45, was senior director of product design for Twitter. He told the BBC that the ambiguity surrounding his job was “strange” and “extremely stressful”.
“I opened my computer on Sunday morning nine days ago and saw that the screen was gray and locked, indicating that I had been banned from my Twitter accounts,” he said.
“After a few days passed, I started reaching out to people, including Elon and the HR manager to ask about my situation.
“The HR manager has since emailed me twice and has not been able to answer whether or not I am employed by Twitter.”
Frustrated, he tweeted his top boss, Elon Musk.
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“If enough retweets you might answer me here,” Mr Thorleifsson said.
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After several follow-up questions, Thorleifsson provided a list of things he had done at the company. The exchange ended with Mr Musk posting two laughing emojis.
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Shortly after that exchange, Thorleifsson said Twitter’s HR department contacted him and told him he had been fired.
The Icelandic entrepreneur had sold his company, Ueno, a creative design agency, to Twitter in early 2021 – after founding the company in Reykjavik in 2014.
As part of the acquisition, he became a full-time employee at Twitter.
“I decided to sell for a few reasons but one of them is that I have muscular dystrophy and my body is slowly but surely failing me,” he told the BBC.
“I have a few good working years left in me so this was a way to end my business and set myself and my family up for years when I won’t be able to do much.”
Halli Thorleifsson with her family
Thorleifsson is worried that Musk will not honor the contract he signed with Twitter when he sold his company to them.
“This is extremely stressful. This is my retirement fund, a way to take care of myself and my family as my illness progresses. Having the richest man in the world on the other end of this, potentially refusing to stick to contracts is not easy for me to accept,” he said.
Last month, Elon Musk appeared to lay off another 200 Twitter employees. That means Twitter now has just over 2,000 employees – down from around 7,500 in October.
“Companies let people go, it’s within their rights,” Thorleifsson said. “They usually tell people about it but apparently it’s the optional part on Twitter now”.
James Clayton is the BBC’s North American technology reporter based in San Francisco. Follow him on Twitter @jamesclayton5.
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