Twitter Engineer Publicly 'Fired' After Trying to One-Up His Boss, Elon Musk
Editor’s Note: Our readers responded strongly to this story when it originally ran; we’re reposting it here in case you missed it.
The degree to which a worker can successfully go toe-to-toe with the boss varies from workplace to workplace, but based on what took place last week, it would be safe to assume publicly confronting Twitter owner Elon Musk is not a good approach in terms of job security.
It began with Musk apologizing for Twitter being slow in some countries, then turned into the spectacle of Twitter engineer Eric Frohnhoefer disagreeing with Musk — all this taking place on Twitter over the course of hours.
It ended with a Muskian variant of former President Donald Trump’s signature line from “The Apprentice” with Musk writing, “He’s fired.”
I have spent ~6yrs working on Twitter for Android and can say this is wrong. https://t.co/sh30ZxpD0N
— Eric Frohnhoefer @ 🏡 (@EricFrohnhoefer) November 13, 2022
For those without a clue what the technobabble meant, The Verge has an explanation.
Musk’s apology “implied that the poor performance is because the app does over 1,000 ‘poorly batched’ remote procedure calls to load the home timeline — basically saying the app has to reach out to other servers a bunch of times and wait for a response for each request,” it wrote.
Frohnhoefer not only disagreed but went on to explain in depth how wrong the boss was, defying those voices that suggested it was not the wisest of courses to follow.
Maybe he should ask questions privately. Maybe using Slack or email. 🤷♂️
— Eric Frohnhoefer @ 🏡 (@EricFrohnhoefer) November 14, 2022
Frohnhoefer and Musk then went back and forth — all in public — disagreeing over the nature and extent of the problem. Musk at one point asked the engineer what he has done to fix a problem with Twitter on Android.
Except he has?! pic.twitter.com/W9ZIhC5C5F
— Rick Rackow (@RiRa12621) November 14, 2022
Elon: “Thanks for coming out, that dryer fire really could have been a problem.”
Firefighter: “literally your entire house is currently, right this second, on fire.”
Elon stan: “with this kind of attitude, you probably don’t want this guy on your team”
Elon: “he’s fired” https://t.co/HX7n16LcUu— strings and sealing wax (@22_over7) November 14, 2022
“You probably don’t want this guy on your team,” one user wrote.
Eventually, the debate came to a close, with a two-word tweet from Musk: “He’s fired.”
Frohnhoefer noted that he has since received other employment offers.
The episode left Twitter users debating the wisdom of what Musk did, with some saying, “This genius in action is rarely seen publicly,” and others less thrilled.
The more you throw your weight about without engaging brain, the worse you look.
Sure, your fanboys will lick your boots, but they’d lick anything. To normal people, you just look deeply insecure.
— Temporary Bat 🦇 (@aisling_bn) November 15, 2022
Elon posted the “wrong explanation” to draw out a reply guy, who then admits he
– knows the app is slow
– knows why it’s slow
– never bothered to fix it, despite being in charge of the project
– For six years!
This is Elon’s engineering genius.
Few. https://t.co/sZjAYWiroo pic.twitter.com/l1v75y4ePP
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) November 14, 2022
Elon literally posted the “wrong explanation” to draw out a reply guy, who then admits he knows the app is slow and even understands why, but he never bothered to fix it, despite being in charge of the project.
This genius in action is rarely seen publicly. pic.twitter.com/1bBQ4XgkyH
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) November 14, 2022
Musk purchased Twitter in late October, and since then has fired about half of Twitter’s employees while shaking up much of Twitter’s internal operations.
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