OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk trolled one of his former employees on the microblogging website after he confronted the CEO in front of the world and he used a clip from the comedy movie “Office Space” to do it.
In the movie a consulting team, known as the “Bobs,” questions employees of the fictional company Initech about what jobs they do for the company as they determine who to keep and who to give the ax to.
“Dear @elonmusk 9 days ago the access to my work computer was cut, along with about 200 other Twitter employees,” Haraldur Thorleifsson said to the CEO in a tweet. “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?” the CEO said.
“I would need to break confidentiality to answer this question here,” the former employee said. “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,” Musk said.
“Among others: – 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 former employee said.
“But the original question was if I was still employed or not since you or your head of HR haven’t been able to answer that yet. But she did just miraculously reply so I finally have confirmation that I no longer work at Twitter!!” he said.
But Musk still responded.
“Which SaaS contract exactly?” Musk said. “Prioritization of what design projects?”
“Level up from what design to what?” the CEO said. “Pics or it didn’t happen.”
“We haven’t hired design roles in 4 months,” he said. “What changes did you make to help with the youths?”
He then tweeted a clip from “Office Space” where the consulting team was questioning one of the employees who essentially described his job as being a “people person.”
“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,” the CEO said. “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 said.
What work have you been doing?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 7, 2023
It’s approved, you go ahead
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 7, 2023
– Level up from what design to what? Pics or it didn’t happen.
– We haven’t hired design roles in 4 months
– What changes did you make to help with the youths?— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 7, 2023
Would you say that you’re a people person?https://t.co/kLD9NWHVIT
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 7, 2023
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
In February Musk hit back at the media and accusing them of falsely reporting the idea that he is boosting his own tweets on the microblogging website.
“Several major media sources incorrectly reported that my Tweets were boosted above normal levels earlier this week,” the CEO said on Friday. “A review of my Tweet likes & views over the past 6 months, especially as a ratio of followers, shows this to be false.”
“We did have a bug that briefly caused replies to have the same prominence as primary Tweets, but that has now been fixed,” he said.
“For example, despite having ~40M fewer followers back then, I have yet to come anywhere close to this gem,” he said with a photo of the analytics on a tweet in which he quipped that he was going to purchase Coca-Cola.
For example, despite having ~40M fewer followers back then, I have yet to come anywhere close to this gem pic.twitter.com/bXVRqNQZhT
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2023
He answered a Twitter user’s question about a story that was penned in Publisher which said he was using a system that would ensure his tweets were seen first.
“The ‘source’ of the bogus Platformer article is a disgruntled employee who had been on paid time off for months, had already accepted a job at Google and felt the need to poison the well on the way out. Twitter will be taking legal action against him,” he said.
