- By James Clayton
- North American Technology Journalist
Halli Thorleifsson
A Twitter employee took to Elon Musk on the platform to ask if he had been fired.
In a tweet to the company’s chief executive, Mr Thorleifsson said: ‘Your HR manager is unable to confirm whether I am employed or not.’
Mr. Musk responded by asking, “What work have you done?”
Halli Thorleifsson told the BBC that nine days after he was blocked from Twitter accounts he did not know whether he had been fired or not.
After a round of follow-up questions and answers with Mr. Musk, which sounded like a live interview for his job, Mr. Thorleifsson said he received an email confirming he had been fired.
Twitter immediately responded to the BBC’s request for comment.
Mr. Thorleifsson, 45, was senior director of product design for Twitter. He told the BBC that the ambiguity around his job was “strange” and “extremely stressful”.
“I opened my computer on Sunday morning nine days ago and saw the screen was gray and locked indicating that I had been blocked from my Twitter accounts,” he said.
“After a few days I started contacting people including Elon and the HR manager to ask about my situation.
“The HR manager has since sent me two emails and has not been able to answer whether or not I am a Twitter employee.”
Frustrated, he tweeted his big boss, Elon Musk.
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“Maybe if enough people retweet you’ll respond to me here,” Mr. Thorleifsson.
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After several follow-up questions, Mr. Thorleifsson provided a list of things he had done in the business. The exchange ended with Mr. Musk posting two laughing emojis.
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Shortly after that exchange, Mr Thorleifsson said Twitter’s human resources department contacted him and told him he had been fired.
The Iceland-based entrepreneur had sold his business, Ueno, a creative design agency, to Twitter in early 2021 – having founded the company in Reykjavik in 2014.
As part of the acquisition, he became a full-time employee at Twitter.
“I decided to sell for several 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 years left in the job, so it was a way to wrap up my business and set me up and my family for years where I won’t be able to do the same.”
Halli Thorleifsson with her family
Mr Thorleifsson fears Mr Musk will honor the contract he signed with Twitter when he sold his company to them.
“It’s extremely stressful. It’s 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 the line , potentially refusing to honor 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, up from around 7,500 in October.
“Companies are letting people go, it’s within their rights,” Mr Thorleifsson said. “They usually tell people about it, but that’s apparently the optional part of Twitter now.”