Elon Musk, the CEO of social media titan Twitter, has seemingly mocked one of his former employees in a response post this past Monday night by making use of a clip from the well-known comedy movie “Office Space,” suggesting that the whining employee never actually added any real value to the company.
“Dear @elonmusk ???? 9 days ago the access to my work computer was cut, along with about 200 other Twitter employees,” exclaimed Haraldur Thorleifsson in a series of social media posts targeting Musk. “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?”
“What work have you been doing?” questioned Musk.
“I would need to break confidentiality to answer this question here,” answered Thorleifsson. “If you have your lawyers share in writing that I can do that then I’d be happy to discuss that openly!”
“It’s approved, you go ahead,” shot back Musk.
It’s approved, you go ahead
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 7, 2023
Thorleifsson kicked back a response by quickly listing off the various things that they had allegedly done, including:
- Led design crits to help level up design across the company
- Was hiring manager for all design roles
- 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
- Worked on efforts to steer the company away from focusing on power users and on to younger users (because our user base is aging)
Thorleifsson then went on by claiming that the head of human resources “just miraculously” issued him a reply and confirmed, “that I no longer work at Twitter!!”
Musk answered the man’s list of claims by simply asking questions and suggesting that a number of his assertions were actually false.
“Which SaaS contract exactly?” questioned Musk. “Prioritization of what design projects?”
“Level up from what design to what?” posited Musk. “Pics or it didn’t happen.”
“We haven’t hired design roles in 4 months,” he went on. “What changes did you make to help with the youths?”
Musk then tweeted out a clip from the movie “Office Space” where an employee is asked what they actually do for the company before proceeding to meltdown entirely.
Would you say that you’re a people person?https://t.co/kLD9NWHVIT
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 7, 2023
“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,” stated Musk. “Can’t say I have a lot of respect for that.”
“But was he fired? No, you can’t be fired if you weren’t working in the first place!” he concluded.
But was he fired? No, you can’t be fired if you weren’t working in the first place!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 7, 2023
