Eric Frohnhoefer, a senior engineer at Twitter, didnt just get fired the normal way at a company that has cut 50% of its staff over the past few weeks. He got fired via a tweet by Elon Musk himself.
Frohnhoefer tangled with Musk in a thread about the Twitter application on Android, which Frohnhoefer worked on while at the company, according to Bloomberg. Musk tweeted on Nov. 13 that the reason Twitter was slow in so many countries was because the application was 1,000 poorly batched RPCs, or remote procedure calls.
I have spent ~6yrs working on Twitter for Android and can say this is wrong, Frohnhoefer responded.
https://twitter.com/EricFrohnhoefer/status/1591902285403418624
Their exchange continued on a thread when another user chimed in, asking Frohnhoefer why he didnt take his feedback to Musk privately. To that, Frohnhoefer responded in a tweet saying, maybe he should ask questions privately. Maybe use Slack or email.
After more back and forth, Musk wrote Hes fired in a now-deleted Tweet. Within hours, Frohnhoefer couldnt access his company laptop anymore, and just like that, his eight-year career at the social media giant was over.
Theyre all a bunch of cowards, he told Forbes about Twitters communication after explaining he had received no formal word from the company beyond the tweet.
No one trusts anyone within the company anymore, he told the outlet. How can you function? Employees dont trust the new management. Management doesnt trust the employees. How do you think youre supposed to get anything done?
Frohnhoefer isnt the first or only employee to be fired for being critical of Musk on the very platform that he has taken over. Ben Leib, another engineer at the company, replied to the same Musk tweet on Sunday that Frohnhoefer did.
As the former tech lead for timelines infrastructure at Twitter, I can confidently say that this man has no idea wtf hes talking about, Leib wrote. He was fired the same day, he confirmed to Bloomberg.
If the public forum was off bounds to criticize their boss, Twitters internal communication platforms might not be entirely safe either. Several employees who discussed their opinions of Twitter using an internal Slack channel were reportedly fired overnight Tuesday for their recent behavior, according to Platformer reporter Casey Newton.
Frohnhoefer and Leib did not respond to Fortunes request for comment.
Twitter did not immediately respond to Fortunes request for comment.
Musk closed on his deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion on Oct. 27. In the handful of weeks that have followed, the company has become unrecognizable in some ways, laying off nearly half of its employees, including the senior leadership. Some people who were fired in the first round of layoffs have since been asked to return to work.
In a seemingly sarcastic tone, last week Musk tweeted: I love when people complain about Twitter on Twitter.
On Tuesday, Musk responded to a Tweet about reports that he had fired employees critical of him on Twitter and the company Slack.
I would like to apologize for firing these geniuses. Their immense talent will no doubt be of great use elsewhere.
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