Twitter Engineer Eric Frohnhoefer Publicly Calls Out Elon Musk, Gets Fired Via Tweet Immediately After

A Twitter employee has purportedly been fired via tweet after criticizing Elon Musk's understanding of a technical issue and engaging in a brief spat online.

hands down gotta be the worst person to work for probably in the world pic.twitter.com/H05feBVOru

— transgender marx (@JUNlPER) November 14, 2022

Eric Frohnhoefer, who has been at the company since 2014, quote-tweeted a tweet by Musk from a few days ago about issues with Twitter loading on Android devices.

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

Elon Musk then replied in a similar way that he notably replied to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal when the original Twitter purchase deal went sour, asking, "What have you done?" Frohnhoefer proceeded to explain what he had done to address the problem and where he believed it actually came from.

Twitter is super slow on Android. What have you done to fix that?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 13, 2022

How to be the ultimate professional and still utterly destroy someone, a masterclass by @EricFrohnhoefer pic.twitter.com/mgUHJ0xLbH

— Dan Kim (@dankim) November 14, 2022

Following this, a reply guy suggested that Musk remove Frohnhoefer from "his team," which he promptly noted that he did. Similarly to when Donald Trump fired his Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense via tweet, Musk has seemingly adopted the practice of using the public platform to let employees go or at least announce their dismissal to the public at large.

@elonmusk with this kind of attitude, you probably don’t want this guy on your team.

— Langdon (@langdon) November 14, 2022

You're the richest man in the world and you fires a guy because he made you look bad on the internet? How insecure are you?

— Qiterpot (@qiterpottheboss) November 14, 2022

At the moment, Twitter appears to be facing a variety of technical issues in addition to political issues and the financial issues of advertisers quitting the platform.

In recent days, users have been reporting bugs in the loading of tweets and cautioning others to delete personal data and credit card information from the site because of how many of its security staff have been laid off.

I have such a morbid fascination with Twitter’s real-time rot. It’s like watching the site travel back in time. My DMs are full of spam. Viral threads are loading upside down. Media isn’t loading right. And I can’t easily follow macro conversations or get useful news updates. https://t.co/82jnlJUcXZ

— Ryan Broderick (@broderick) November 13, 2022

genuinely, genuinely, do not buy twitter blue. i'm not just saying "don't give elon your money" i am saying "don't put your credit card info into this website that just fired the grand bulk of its security staff"

— conejito picante (@SpookyBiscuits) November 10, 2022

Ironically, Frohnhoefer shared about his struggle to not tweet anything problematic a few days ago via meme, but it seems as if he has succumbed to an irresistible urge to criticize Musk — and perhaps been punished for it.

The struggle is real… https://t.co/S7PiafgNeB

— Eric Frohnhoefer @ 🏡 (@EricFrohnhoefer) November 7, 2022

You're the richest man in the world and you fires a guy because he made you look bad on the internet? How insecure are you?

— Qiterpot (@qiterpottheboss) November 14, 2022

Overall, Musk has seemingly had a busy couple of weeks doing a variety of tasks that some (former) employees believe he isn't qualified to do or make decisions on.

In addition to arguing with Frohnhoefer, he took time to reassure worried Tesla investors, streamline redundant Twitter technical processes, spread a conspiracy theory about the FTX crypto crash and investigate whether democracy is under threat in Brazil.

This is up to the Tesla board

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 14, 2022

I’ve been at Twitter SF HQ all night. Will be working & sleeping here until org is fixed.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 14, 2022

Can you cite specific instances of significance?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 14, 2022