Twitter Owner Elon Musk has been called a “Free Speech Absolutist”. Elon Musk Fired company engineers who criticized in public on social media.
Asked by a colleague whether he learned of his firing through the tweet, Frohnhoefer responded, “News to me,” according to the Slack messages.
Frohnhoefer quote-tweeted Musk’s “fired” tweet late Monday morning with a salute emoji that has been used by many current and former Twitter employees recently around the layoffs. By early Monday evening, Frohnhoefer had tweeted out a screenshot of his computer showing that it had been locked, adding: “Guess it is official now.”
Eric Frohnhoefer, whose LinkedIn account says he worked at Twitter for more than eight years, apparently did not receive formal notice of his firing before or at the time Musk tweeted about it, according to internal Slack messages obtained by CNBC
Ankita Chakravarti: Twitter’s new chief, Elon Musk, does not like being questioned by his employees, at least not on social media. Out of all the people, Elon Musk was recently fired, and one of the old talented engineers was fired because he questioned Musk on Twitter.
Musk announced that Eric Frohnhoefer, the engineer who had argued with him on Twitter, had been fired. Interestingly, Frohnhoefer was not impacted during the layoffs which claimed jobs of more than 3000 employees across the globe. He was dismissed because he argued with Elon Musk on Twitter.
Frohnhoefer did not respond to a request for comment. Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The apparent public firing adds to what has already been a tumultuous run for Musk since he took control of the company late last month. he has laid large chunks of the company workforce overseas through the chaotic rollback of the platform’s new paid verification of service.
Musk began exchanging tweets with Frohnhoefer on Sunday after Frohnhoefer disputed a tweet by Elon Musk about why the app had been “super slow in many countries for those who use the Android operating system.
I have spent 6 years working on Twitter for Android and can say this is wrong Frohnhoefer tweeted.
After Musk asked what he has done to fix Android’s issues, Frohnhoefer offered a detailed explanation about the company app, pointing to “features that get little usage, as well as tech debt and time spent waiting for network responses.
Amid the back-and-forth, a Twitter user suggested Monday that Musk may not want Frohnhoefer on your team.
