SpaceX and Twitter CEO Elon Musk has been called both Satan and a saint — for most, there is little middle ground. A recent high-profile tweetstorm involving Musk and a middle-management employee illustrates the matter.
The conflict began when Twitter employee Haraldur Thorleifsson posted his grievances on Twitter.
Thorleifsson complained that he had been locked out of portions of his work area and did not know if he was still a Twitter employee.
Haraldur complained: “9 days ago, the access to my work computer was cut, along with about 200 other Twitter employees.” Thorleifsson tagged Musk in the tweet.
Thorleifsson added: “However, your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am an employee or not. You’ve not answered my emails. Maybe if enough people retweet, you’ll answer me here?”
The employee’s poor form in putting an internal matter in the public eye was matched by Musk’s decision to engage him on his platform.
“What work have you been doing?” Musk asked.
Thorleifsson responded: “I would need to break confidentiality to answer this question here. If you have your lawyers share in writing that I can do that then I’d be happy to discuss that openly!”
Musk, knowing the situation was drawing attention, continued to move forward. “It’s approved; you go ahead,” he wrote.
Thorleifsson replied by presenting a list of accomplishments:
- Led the effort to save about $500k on one SaaS contract. Supported closing down many others
- Led prioritization of design projects across the company to make sure we were able to deliver with a small team
- Led design crits to help level up design across the company
- Was hiring manager for all design roles
- Worked on efforts to steer the company away from focusing on power users and on to younger users (because our user base is aging)
The disgruntled employee then noted that the head of human resources “just miraculously” responded to his previous messages and confirmed, “that I no longer work at Twitter!!”
Musk evidently did not appreciate the tone and responded by inferring that some of Thorleifsson’s claims were exaggerated or false.
Musk asked pointedly: “Which SaaS contract exactly?”
Musk pressed further: “Prioritization of what design projects? Level up from what design to what? [Do you have] pics or it didn’t happen?”
Musk added: “We haven’t hired design roles in 4 months. What changes did you make to help with the youths?”
Confident that Thorleifsson had overstated his worth to the company, Musk then tweeted a clip from “Office Space.” The clip mocks an employee who is asked what he does for the company and then has a meltdown.
Musk continued: “The reality is that this guy (who is independently wealthy) did no actual work, claimed as his excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from typing, yet was simultaneously tweeting up a storm. Can’t say I have a lot of respect for that.”
Musk added: “The reason he confronted me in public was to get a big payout. From what I’ve been told, he’s done almost no work for the past four months. … Despite his claims on Twitter that he did work, it turns out he told HR that he couldn’t work because he couldn’t type, but was, over the same period, typing up a storm on Twitter. … This hurts my faith in humanity.”
Regarding his termination, Musk wrote: “But was he fired? No, you can’t be fired if you weren’t working in the first place!”
After the high-profile exchange, a Twitter employee who is familiar with Thorleifsson’s work wrote:
“As someone who has worked directly with @iamharaldur during a turnaround, this is super disappointing to see. Not only is his work ethic next level, his talent and humility are world class. Exactly the kind of person you want on your team when the odds are stacked. I feel certain there’s a deep misunderstanding somewhere in here of ‘did no actual work.'”
To his credit, Musk allowed the tweet noted above to stay up and decided to investigate the matter further. Following a review of the matter, Musk posted:
“Based on your comment, I just did a video call with Halli to figure out what’s real vs what I was told. It’s a long story. Better to talk to people than communicate via tweet.”
Musk then posted a public apology:
“I would like to apologize to Halli for my misunderstanding of his situation. It was based on things I was told that were untrue or, in some cases, true, but not meaningful.
“He is considering remaining at Twitter.”
The exchange has prompted many to praise Musk for admitting an error and issuing a public apology — others are criticizing the CEO for engaging publicly before verifying all of the facts. For Musk, it’s just another day at the office.
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