Elon Musk tricks Twitter managers to choose their successors
2 min read . Updated: 11 Mar 2023, 12:53 PM IST
PremiumWhen the managers gave him the list, Elon Musk immediately fired the top executives and replaced them with the nominated employees.
Billionaire Elon Musk, who has been in the headlines since he completed $44 billion to own Twitter last October, reportedly sacked 50 top executives and managers earlier this year, despite announcing that there will be no more layoffs at the microblogging company. He wiped off around 75% of the workforce.
The latest report by iNews revealed how Elon Musk tricked the top managers and fired them in February by not even giving a single hint. The new Twit chief asked the managers at Twitter to nominate the best employees from their respective teams for promotion.
When the managers gave him the list, Musk immediately fired the top executives and replaced them with the nominated employees. The senior staffers must have not imagined their layoff in such a way.
It is said that Elon Musk replaced the managers because they were drawing high salaries. However, the promoted employees have not been offered as high salaries as their predecessors. The Twitter CEO's cost-cutting strategy has become a topic of discussion these days.
Some employees were even fired from the company without even informing them. Haraldur Thorleifsson, who until recently was employed at Twitter, logged in to his computer last Sunday to do some work — only to find himself locked out, along with 200 others.
He might have figured, as others before him have in the chaotic months of layoffs and firings since Elon Musk took over the company, that he was out of a job.
Instead, after nine days of no answer from Twitter as to whether or not he was still employed, Thorleifsson decided to tweet at Musk to see if he could catch the billionaire's attention and get an answer to Schrödinger’s job situation.
Late Tuesday afternoon, however, Musk had a change of heart. “I would like to apologize to Halli for my misunderstanding of his situation. It was based on things I was told that were untrue or, in some cases, true, but not meaningful." he tweeted. “He is considering remaining at Twitter."
Thorleifsson did not immediately respond to a message for comment following Musk's tweet. In an earlier email, he called the experience “surreal."