'Elon Musk Fired Me in a Tweet'

I worked at Twitter for eight years as a software engineer, and spent the last six working for Twitter Android as the tech lead for the Tweets team.

It was a very supportive environment, very collaborative, and there was a lot of enthusiasm for the product. I think people worked there because they liked Twitter. A lot of people who came in were already avid Twitter users—whereas I had to set up my Twitter account when I joined!

I felt supported in my career, and that there was a reward for working hard. The way Twitter was set up meant that engineers did all the coding, while engineering managers were more in charge of career growth and making sure teams talked to each other. The former Twitter model was more interested in mentorship. You could say, "I want to get a promotion," and the managers would help find opportunities for you to grow.

How I felt about Musk buying Twitter

When I read that Musk was buying Twitter, my reaction was to wait and see. A few of my colleagues were quietly excited, but a lot of my colleagues were very upset about it. They were worried after his tweets about unbanning accounts, how he was going to run the business, and the kind of content he said he was willing to allow.

I was mostly worried about the work-life balance. Tech is a small world and I talked with some SpaceX employees who told me they burned out after two years because of the work culture. That's not something I wanted.

I work remotely, so I don't get as much of the office gossip as I used to. I found out from the New York Times that Musk's acquisition had closed. There were no emails from Elon or his people for about a week, and then on Thursday, 3 November we got the email saying they would be laying off a number of employees and we would find out by 9 a.m. the next day.

When I read the email, I thought the timing wasn't great—before the holidays, when hiring and the economy is slow—but that what's going to happen is going to happen. I told people I'd land on my feet.

But, shortly after that email, we started saying our goodbyes to colleagues. One by one, people were on Twitter saying, "Hey, I'm out." That's how we found out if our peers were going to be there tomorrow.

It was sad. I worked with some of these people for a long time and I enjoyed working with them. It was disappointing to see so many people go.

I didn't worry about my own job but I worried about what was next for me and what I'd be working on. No one seemed to know what was going on or what would happen next.

My Twitter exchange with Elon Musk

On the afternoon of November 13, I saw a tweet from Elon apologizing for Twitter being slow. He claimed it was because the app had poorly batched 1,200 remote procedure calls (RPCs).

Twitter does have significant performance issues but the cause is definitely not 1,200 poorly batched RPCs. The backend services typically use RPCs to communicate but this is done within the data center over very fast network links. Musk's tweet seemed to mix a lot of things together that weren't actually correct. It didn't make any sense to me.

I saw it, I thought it was wrong, so I tweeted about it. I quote-tweeted Musk's tweet and wrote: "I have spent 6yrs working on Twitter for Android and can say this is wrong."

I didn't think too much about it; I had 600 followers at the time who were mostly Twitter employees. I went to Starbucks and when I came back, one of my coworkers messaged me, "Eric, he replied."

I was like, "Oh, s***." He has almost 120 million followers; I never expected he would even see my tweet, let alone reply.

He asked questions about microservices, and he also asked what I had done to fix Twitter's slowness on Android. I think I answered these questions in a professional and appropriate manner, outlining the issues I saw on the app and explaining why I did not think RPCs were the problem.

People asked me on Twitter, "Why did you say this in public?" But all the communication from Musk was happening on Twitter: that was where the conversation was happening.

Over the rest of the day, I gained almost 60,000 followers. One of Musk's followers said something about Twitter employees getting $400 lunches so I made a snarky comment and said: "100% Worth it. The food was great. Really liked the ghost pepper mayo." Later in that thread, Elon said about me: "He's fired." He has since deleted that tweet.

I don't follow Musk, and I was getting so many notifications it was hard to dig through them all. Another coworker messaged me and asked, "Eric, are you still online?" I told them I was still working and they told me about Musk's tweet. That's how I found out I had lost my job.

A few hours later, my access to the server was turned off. That was my last day working at Twitter.

The aftermath

For me, it sucked. My old colleagues say they're in disbelief about it, too. I didn't think my tweets could lead to me losing my job. One of the core values of Twitter was to "communicate fearlessly to build trust." If you thought something wasn't right or if you thought a product decision was wrong, you were encouraged to talk to that person. Under Old Twitter, I think I would still have a job.

A few days after I lost my job, my 10-year-old son said: "Hey, dad, you seem a lot less grumpy." So I think the situation at work had been taking its toll and I hadn't noticed it. After all the drama and worrying about my job, I think this provided easy closure.

A lot of my friends left Twitter in the next few weeks, following Musk's ultimatum of either "working long hours at high intensity" or leaving the company. No one wants to work "extremely hardcore" 12-hour days for no reward, in my opinion.

Some users have left the platform in the past few weeks, too, and I find it hard to disconnect from that. I built a lot of features, I worked on a lot of these projects, I invested a lot of time and energy into the platform and maintaining it, so it's hard to see. It's something that I care about and it's frustrating to see how it's gone.

I don't know what the future of Twitter looks like. Only time will tell. As for my next steps, I plan to take some time off and hopefully find another job in the New Year.

Eric Frohnhoefer was a software engineer at Twitter for eight years. He lives in San Diego, California, and is on Twitter at @EricFrohnhoefer.

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.

As told to Newsweek's My Turn deputy editor, Katie Russell.