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“Your head of HR cannot confirm whether I am still employed or not.” A Twitter employee had to ask with a tweet to CEO Elon Musk whether or not he was still employed.
mtmSource: BBC News
Icelander Halli Thorleifsson knew nothing. He had been locked out of his work computer for several days, but he had no idea why. He decided to contact Twitter’s HR department, but they couldn’t answer him there either. That is why he decided – via Twitter – to contact CEO Elon Musk. “You haven’t replied to my emails yet, but if enough people retweet this, you might respond here.”
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That happened too. “What kind of work have you done,” Musk asked Thorleifsson. A whole series of follow-up questions followed and a conversation that eventually read like a live interview for his job. When Thorleifsson, who served as senior director of product design, finally said what he’d been up to, Musk simply replied with two smiling emojis.
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Shortly after the Twitter conversation, the Icelander received an email from HR confirming that he had indeed been fired. “What a strange and extremely stressful experience,” Thorleifsson told the BBC afterwards. “Companies are allowed to fire people, that is their right. But usually they do inform people about it. Apparently that is optional with Twitter.”