Icelandic entrepreneur Haraldur Thorleifsson had a question for his (likely) former employer at Twitter Elon Musk. Thorleifsson, the 2019 Icelandic businessman of the year, in a viral thread asked about his employment status and dues settlement to Musk.
“Dear Elon Musk, 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. Musk has laid off thousands of employees so far in a bid to make the microblogging site profitable.
He even tagged Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. “I would really appreciate your help on this one. My company was acquired on your watch and I joined because I believed in what you were building,” he wrote. Thorleifsson sold his company to Twitter in 2021. Musk acquired Twitter in a $44 billion deal last year.
Musk responded in the comments and asked the businessman about the work he has been doing at Twitter.
Thorleifsson wrote: “I would need to break confidentiality to answer this question here. If you have your lawyers share in writing that I can do that then I'd be happy to discuss that openly!”
Musk gave an approval and Thorleifsson listed what his roles included.
“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),” he wrote.
Musk had a few counters.
“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?” he tweeted and followed it up with a clip from 1999 US black comedy “Office Space”. The clip was titled, “What would you say...you do here?
“To be clear. You have every right to lay me off. That's totally fair and fine. But usually people are told when that happens. Maybe with a letter or something. Which didn't happen for 9 days despite multiple emails to you and others,” Thorleifsson responded and asked if he would be paid what he was owed.
“But as I shared I finally got confirmation that I am not an employee anymore. Again, that's totally within your rights. No complaints. But can you make sure I get paid what I'm owed?”
Musk didn’t respond after that and in a separate thread Thorleifsson summarized the increasingly bizarre conversation with Musk. He then reestablished his demand for settling dues.
“But ok, fair enough, I've been laid off and I'm ok with that. Next up though is finding out if Twitter will pay me what they owe me per my contract. Or, will Elon Musk, one of the richest people in the world, try to avoid paying? Stay tuned!!” he wrote.
Haraldur Thorleifsson, 45, launched a project in 2021 called "Ramp Up Reykjavík" that helps local businesses install wheelchair ramps to improve accessibility for people with disabilities.
Thorleifsson was born with a genetic congenital muscle disease and has been using a wheelchair since he was 24.
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