Elon Musk has reportedly fired one of his Twitter engineers after the employee reportedly argued with him over the Android version of the platform's mobile app.
The world's richest man has been in and out of the headlines during the past few weeks, following his $44 billion takeover of Twitter. Soon after, Musk removed the board of directors, allegedly fired the whole human rights team, eliminated remote working, and launched an $8 Twitter Blue subscription.
And it seems like the newly self-proclaimed "Chief Twit" is continuing his mission for change.
In a series of since-deleted tweets, Eric Frohnhoefer - who had been working at Twitter for eight years as a software engineer, per his LinkedIn account - replied to a tweet from Musk that read: "[By the way] I'd like to apologize for Twitter being super slow in many countries. App is doing >1000 poorly batched RPCs just to render a home timeline!"
Frohnoefer responded by saying: "I have spent ~6 years working on Twitter for Android and can say this is wrong."
Another user chimed into the discussion and suggested Frohnhoefer contact Musk privately, saying: "I have been a developer for 20 years. And I can tell you that as the domain expert here you should inform your boss privately.
"Trying to one up him in public while he is trying to learn and be helpful makes you look like a spiteful self serving dev."
"Maybe he should ask questions privately. Maybe using Slack or email," Frohnhoefer replied.
Someone else seemed to agree, adding: "[Elon Musk] with this kind of attitude, you probably don't want this guy on your team."
Musk himself then jumped in and replied with: "He's fired."
Soon after the heated exchanged, Frohnhoefer - who uses an Apple Mac provided by Twitter - posted an image of his locked screen, pointing out that he'd been blocked from accessing his laptop.
"Guess it is official now," he wrote alongside the image.
Per internal Slack messages obtained by CNBC, Frohnhoefer had not been notified of his dismissal prior to Musk's tweet, and has not received formal notice of his termination. According to the messages, he has responded with: "News to me," when asked by a colleague whether he was aware he had been fired.
Sadly, however, Frohnhoefer is not alone - Musk reportedly let go approximately 50% of Twitter's workforce since his controversial takeover. In fact, many employees filed a lawsuit against the company, who they argue breached numerous regulations during the process.
Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney who filed the lawsuit, told Bloomberg: "We filed this lawsuit tonight in an attempt to make sure that employees are aware that they should not sign away their rights and that they have an avenue for pursuing their rights."
She says that Twitter was in breach of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) during their mass layoff. This Act holds that major corporations that are conducting mass layoffs must provide their employees with 60 days advance notice.
