Yesterday, an former employee of Twitter tagged Elon Musk to complain that access to his work computer had been cut nine days earlier. Surprisingly, Musk responded and the Twitter gloves came off, continuing a public spat that is still happening as of this writing.
It all began when Haraldur Thorleifsson, who goes by the name Halli, tweeted to Musk that HR could not even confirm whether he was still an employee, while claiming 200 other Twitter employees have also been denied access to their work computers.
Elon Musk, who was just blasted over Twitter’s alleged lack of concern for safety, actually responded, asking him what work he was doing.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of all is that Halli replied, explaining that answering would be breaking confidentiality, and then Elon Musk actually gave his approval to do so.
Surely, a public discussion with an employee or ex-employee on such issues is better served in DMs, as Halli respectfully offered, but Musk seemed to not care (which, all things considered, is not too surprising).
Halli proceeds with permission.
Halli probably did himself no favors asking Musk if he could talk about how the company is doing since he took over, but Musk ignored that particular question anyway.
After explaining what he does for the company, Musk asks for visual proof. Is this necessary when you consider the alleged existence of Twitter’s HR department? Even more so, why not just ask who his supervisor is, and find out from that supervisor? Is Twitter really that disorganized? OK, don’t answer that last question.
Halli even honestly explains to Musk that he has every right to fire him. However, he was never informed of his termination, and can’t seem to get answers from HR and, despite getting responses from Musk, has still not received a direct answer.
But Musk doesn’t know when to draw the line. He publicly states that Halli is indepently wealthy, does no actual work, and that he uses his disability as an excuse.
Clearly, Musk has no PR team, which he desperately needs because he’s seemingly not smart enough (oh no, there I said it!) not to tweet out such things.
Halli responded, explaining his disability.
And he also explained that he was doing the right thing by communicating with HR.
Yet, even Halli can’t help himself with a dig back at Musk.
Musk claims that Halli is looking for a big payout, hence why he went public. Of course, this completely ignores the fact that it was Halli who suggested that the conversation not take place in a public forum, and that it was Musk who encouraged otherwise.
Musk then suggests that since Halli did no work anyway, how could he be fired?
Halli then ends the spat by inquiring whether he will still get paid what he’s owed.
The three most embarrassing things about this Twitter conversation are, first of all, the fact that it happened publicly. It’s foolish that Musk was OK with that.
Secondly, Musk claiming that Halli’s disability is just an excuse. That’s likely to be the most controversial aspect of this exchange.
Lastly, it seems clear that Twitter was not sure when Halli worked there, if he ever did, or who his supervisor is. They should have found that out before asking him on social media.
Yet, as Elon himself has said before, at least Twitter is entertaining.
UPDATE: Elon Musk has tweeted out an apology to Halli.
You might also notice that he says, “Better to talk to people than communicate via tweet,” which is something we and probably everyone else pointed out. Sometimes people learn common sense lessons the hard way.