Elon Musk apologises to sacked Twitter employee after online exchange

Elon Musk publicly apologised to theTwitter employee of two years after he tweeted to the platform's chief whether he had a job or not.

On Monday,Halli Tholeifsson, a senior director at the company, tweeted to Musk that he was not able to access his work computer nine days prior, along with 200 employees who had reportedly been laid off.

"Dear @elonmusk, 9 days ago the access to my work computer was cut, along with about 200 other Twitter employees. 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?" he tweeted.

Add WION as a Preferred Source

Responding to his text, Musk said, "what work have you been doing?"

The conversation that sounded more like a job interview continued for a while, after which Halli said he recieved a mail confirming that he has been sacked.

The 45-year-old ex-employee worked as a senior director in product design for the microblogging site. The Iceland-based entrepreneur sold his company, Ueno, a creative design agency to Twitter in 2021 and became a full-time employee at the microblogging platform.

The conversation went viral, with Musk wading in with some replies. He criticised Halli saying that he is an independently wealthy man who actually did no actual work and claimed his disability as an excuse that prevented him from typing, yet was simultaneously tweeting up a storm.

Musk added that he can't say if he has a lot of respect for that.

However, hours later, Musk took to the platform to apologise afterformer Lonely Planet CEO Daniel Houghton vouched for the designer and tweeted that he had directly worked with him. Musk also offeredThorleifsson his job back.

"I would like to apologise 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," he added.

After being fired, Halli told BBC that HR remained unresponsive to his queries about whether he was fired or not, following which he had to take up with Musk on Twitter.

"My theory is they made a mistake and are now looking for anything they can find to make this a "for cause" firing to avoid having to fulfil their contractual obligations," he said.

(with inputs from agencies)

WATCH WION LIVE HERE