Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, now also Twitter‘s head honcho, has reportedly fired engineers at the social media company who publicly criticized or argued with him online.
What Happened: Musk, who calls himself a “free speech absolutist,” fired engineer Eric Frohnhoefer, who worked on Twitter’s app on Android mobile operating system, Bloomberg reported on Monday.
Musk confirmed the firing on Twitter, but it could not be independently verified if Frohnhoefer was laid off from the company.
It all started with Musk apologizing for “Twitter being super slow in many countries. App is doing >1000 poorly batched RPCs just to render a home timeline!”
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Engineers Reply: Frohnhoefer reposted Musk’s tweet, suggesting the Twitter chief’s technical understanding of the app was wrong.
“I have spent ~6yrs working on Twitter for Android and can say this is wrong,” he tweeted.
I have spent ~6yrs working on Twitter for Android and can say this is wrong. https://t.co/sh30ZxpD0N
— Eric Frohnhoefer @ (@EricFrohnhoefer) November 13, 2022
Musk asked Frohnhoefer to elaborate, before saying, “Twitter is super slow on Android. What have you done to fix that?”
Later, the billionaire entrepreneur tweeted, “He’s fired,” to which Frohnhoefer responded with a salute emoji.
Another engineer Ben Lieb also said he was fired after posting a critical tweet about Musk, according to Bloomberg.
Lieb quoted Musk’s apology tweet, saying, “As the former tech lead for timelines infrastructure at Twitter, I can confidently say this man has no idea wtf he’s talking about.”
Leib, who said he worked at Twitter for a decade, confirmed to Bloomberg he was fired on Sunday.
Why It Matters: Musk’s changes have led to a lack of communication internally in terms of who is in charge and what Twitter’s priorities are, the report said, citing current and former staffers.
On Monday, Twitter implemented a coding freeze, stopping product updates to the app without informing employees, as per Bloomberg.
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