Unfortunately, nobody is immune to being laid off these days, especially employees of Twitter. Since Elon Musk purchased the social media giant in October, Twitter has reportedly let go of about 5,500 employees. And while every company has the right to lay off workers when necessary, they still owe it to their employees, current and former, to communicate clearly and respectfully.
So when one Twitter employee from Iceland, Halli Thorleifsson, was given no information before access to his work computer was cut off, he turned to social media to desperately try to get an explanation from Elon Musk.
Twitter has laid off thousands of employees since Elon Musk bought the site
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But after hundreds suddenly lost access to their work computers without receiving any information, Halli Thorleifsson tweeted Musk looking for answers
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After the exchange was called "the most entertaining exit interview [one spectator had] ever witnessed", Elon dug himself a hole by making personal attacks against Halli
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So Halli responded detailing exactly what his disability is and how he came to work for Twitter
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Elon Musk has only owned Twitter for about 5 months now, but he has already made massive changes to the way the company is run. In an effort to reduce costs, Musk has slashed the number of employees, going from about 7,500 in October to about 2,000 by the end of February, 2023. But the worst part about these layoffs is the way in which he went about them. Rather than having conversations with these employees, or at the very least communicating via email, the layoffs came as a shock.
The New York Times published an article detailing the events that occurred the week of February 26th, 2023, noting that, “The company’s internal messaging service, Slack, was taken offline, preventing employees from chatting with each other or looking up company data ... On Saturday night, some employees discovered that they were logged out of their corporate email accounts and laptops, three of the people said — the first hint that layoffs had begun.”
“By Sunday morning, the scope of the cuts was becoming clear,” The New York Times continued. “Some Twitter employees used the platform to post farewell messages, while workers who had kept their jobs scrambled to use encrypted messaging services like Signal to determine who else was left. By Saturday night, the remaining employees had also lost access to a Google chat service associated with their work email accounts, three people said.”
Among the hundreds of people laid off were a few founders of smaller tech companies that had been acquired by Twitter over the years, including Halli, the man who started this conversation. His design studio, Ueno, had been bought by Twitter in 2021, but unfortunately, he’s now just trying to get the money he deserves. Apparently, laying off employees like Halli can be much more expensive than letting go of the average Twitter employee. Founders of tech companies typically receive higher compensation packages when their companies are acquired, and their stock and bonuses must be paid out from Twitter as well.
It’s frustrating and concerning to see the way Elon Musk has handled this situation, however. Lay-offs are one thing, but Musk made personal attacks against Halli on Twitter, insinuating that he was falsely claiming to have a disability and doing “no actual work”. Halli responded with a brilliant thread detailing that he does in fact have muscular dystrophy, while making clever digs at Elon Musk along the way. But the situation should have never escalated to this point. As the owner of a company like Twitter, Musk should certainly have the professionalism and maturity to handle issues like this offline, without being offended or attempting to insult workers who are simply concerned about their employment status.
We would love to hear your thoughts on this situation in the comments below, pandas. How do you think Halli and Elon Musk handled this encounter on Twitter? Feel free to share how you would have replied, and then if you’re interested in checking out another Bored Panda article discussing Elon Musk and his purchase of Twitter, look no further than right here!
Invested readers shared their thoughts on the exchange, with many calling out Elon Musk for being so unprofessional
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Bored Panda has reached out to Halli via email and will update this article as soon as we hear back.