Elon Musk trolls employees on Twitter who just wanted to know if he still has a job

Anyone interested in learning more about Elon Musk’s questionable leadership skills can watch the public discussion with an employee who tweeted about his job status.

Icelander Haraldur Thorleifsson tweeted Musk nine days after he was banned from his company laptop without notice or follow-up information, and HR couldn’t tell him if he’d been fired.

Thorleifsson also complained that Musk had not answered his relevant emails. Therefore, according to the Twitter employee, he turns to the CEO via the short message service. If his tweet gets enough retweets, Musk might chime in, Thorleifsson said.

And Musk actually answered — four hours later. When asked what Thorleifsson had done on Twitter, he explained that he was not actually allowed to discuss it publicly without the permission of the Twitter lawyers. “Permission granted,” Musk said.

After Thorleifsson listed a number of his activities, Musk asked – questioning the work done and beginning to ridicule it: “Pics or it didn’t happen.”

Thorleifsson explained that he could not produce anything as access to his laptop was blocked. But he wrote “Figma” and other design projects, to which Musk responded with two smileys.

Musk then posted a clip from the comedy Office Space in which a disgruntled employee tries to justify his role to two managers. “Are you a social person?” Was Musk’s question?

Even up to this point, the conversation isn’t very funny when you realize that the owner of a multi-billion dollar company is clipping one of his employees in front of an audience of millions.

The sequel, in which Musk addresses the Twitter community, shows that things can get even worse. In it he explains that the truth is that Thorleifsson doesn’t actually work at all, using a disability as an excuse that prevents him from writing.

At the same time, according to Musk, he writes a flood of messages on Twitter. He has no respect for that. And further: “But was he fired? No, you can’t get fired if you haven’t even started work!”

Musk’s reaction is not only disrespectful to the (former) employee, but also makes secret information about his state of health public.

Thorleifsson explained afterwards that he suffers from dysferlinopathy, a special form of muscular dystrophy Gizmodo writes. The Icelander is now dependent on a wheelchair, but can work on the computer for one to two hours at a time.

That was not a problem before Musk took over Twitter. As an executive, his work consisted of providing teams with strategic and tactical direction for their work on Twitter.

The resignation, if there was one, seems to be fine with Thorleifsson, although companies usually hear about his dismissal. His next step now is to find out if Twitter will pay him the severance pay he’s owed.

You have to know that Thorleifsson founded the digital agency Ueno, which was taken over by Twitter in 2021. According to Techcrunch Company founders like Thorleifsson shouldn’t actually be fired because that would be too expensive for Twitter due to their special status.

However, this former maxim had been broken several times in the past few days. In addition to Squad founder Esther Crawford, who made headlines in November 2022 because of her overnight stay in the Twitter office, Breaker founder Leah Culver and Revue founder Martijn de Kuijper were also fired.