Elon Musk is said to have stepped up his purge of Twitter’s engineers who criticised the new CEO after the takeover deal. An estimated dozen or more workers have been let go in the past couple of days after they rebuked Musk, who previously called himself a “free speech absolutist». While Twitter and Musk have not yet confirmed the firings, the company’s new CEO announced he had fired an Android developer earlier this week after he corrected him on Twitter.
What began as the firing of two longtime Twitter engineers after they criticized their new boss has turned into a purge, as Elon Musk clamps down on internal and external dissent. In the past 24 hours, an estimated dozen or so employees have been let go after openly rebuking Musk, who has called himself a “free speech absolutist,” according to two people familiar with the matter. Musk and Twitter haven’t confirmed the firings, but employees have been monitoring the situation through public tweets and private messages.
In one case, Musk announced a firing in a tweet. Engineer Eric Frohnhoefer, who worked on Twitter’s app for the Android mobile operating system, on Sunday reposted one of Musk’s tweets with a comment, saying that Musk’s understanding of a technical part of Twitter’s app was “wrong.” Musk replied and asked Frohnhoefer to elaborate, before writing, “Twitter is super slow on Android. What have you done to fix that?”
After attempting to explain his thinking in a number of tweets, Frohnhoefer was asked by another user why he hadn’t shared his feedback with his new boss privately.
