The Twitter firing saga has taken another dramatic turn when a now ex-employee of the company confronted Musk on the social media platform and made quite the public spectacle of an exit interview.
A former Twitter employee named Haraldur Þorleifsson, an Icelandic businessupdates.org and philanthropist who founded the creative agency Ueno, Tweeted to Musk claiming he had lost access to his work computer on Twitter and wanted clarification on whether he was still employed by the company.
Best @Elon Musk
9 days ago, access to my work computer was cut off along with about 200 other Twitter employees.
However, your head of HR cannot confirm whether I am an employee or not. You haven’t answered my emails.
Maybe if enough people retweet, reply me here?
— Halli (@iamharaldur) March 6, 2023
Musk quickly joked back at the now-former employee, asking him, “What kind of work have you done?” After more back and forth, the former employee listed a slew of tasks he reportedly accomplished while working at Twitter.
Musk asked for photo proof and the bickering continued before Musk ended (for his part) the exchange with two crying smiling emojis.
You locked my computer. I can’t access photos or documents. If you want to have it opened, I can get you things.
— Halli (@iamharaldur) March 7, 2023
During the exchangesaid that Twitter’s HR representative did indeed “miraculously reply” and confirmed that he had been fired.
The man, who was named Iceland’s “Person of the Year” by several local outlets for his work to improve accessibility for the disabled in his country, doubled down towards the end and asked Musk if he would be paid in full for his disability after dismissal.
Things then took an even uglier turn, after Musk responded to a Tweet about the debacle of an individual Twitter user who said the now-ex-employee was “individually wealthy” and “didn’t do any real work: and claimed he had a disability.” had prevented him from typing.
He has a prominent, active Twitter account and is wealthy. The reason he confronted me in public was to get a big payout.
From what I’ve learned, he’s done almost no work, middle management or otherwise, for the past four months.
Despite his claims on Twitter that he… https://t.co/LGuAlg4Eew
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 7, 2023
“Despite his claims on Twitter that he was working, he appeared to have told HR he couldn’t work because he couldn’t type, but was typing up a storm on Twitter during the same period,” Musk wrote. “Yet there are many people on Twitter who defend him. This is damaging my faith in humanity.”
After seeing this, the man took to his own account to call Musk again and explain that he is wheelchair bound due to muscular dystrophy and shared his story of how he was diagnosed and how he sold his company to Twitter in a 17 Tweet-long thread.
He too noted why he chose to confront Musk publicly.
“The reason I asked you out publicly is because you (or anyone else on Twitter) haven’t responded to my private messages,” he said. “You had every right to fire me. But it would have been nice to let me know!’
Less than two weeks ago, Musk laid off another 200 Twitter employees, which was about 10% of the company’s total remaining workforce.
Twitter is now estimated to have fewer than 2,000 employees.
