Elon Musk speaking at Tesla Investor Day.
Courtesy: Tesla
Elon Musk on Tuesday backed down from his attacks on a disabled Twitter employee who was laid off by the company and apologized for what he called a “misunderstanding.”
On Tuesday, the Twitter CEO questioned the work performance of Haraldur Thorleifsson — who goes by “Halli” — who he said has “done almost no work for the past four months.” Musk is also the CEO of electric car manufacturer Tesla.
“I would like to apologize to Halli for my misunderstanding of his situation,” Musk tweeted late Tuesday. “It was based on things I was told that were untrue or, in some cases, true, but not meaningful.”
“He is considering remaining at Twitter,” Musk added.
Thorleifsson, a disabled Icelandic entrepreneur, found himself drawn into a war of words with Musk after asking about the status of his employment. Thorleifsson and Twitter, which no longer has a communications department, did not respond to questions from CNBC on the spat by the time of publication.
On Monday, Thorleifsson, 45, tweeted Musk, saying that he had been locked out of his work computer for several days and failed to get a response from Twitter’s human resources department on whether he had been fired.
He suggested he may have been one of 200 employees reportedly let go by the company in February. Thorleifsson lives and works in the Icelandic capital Reykjavik with his wife and two children.
Musk, an avid user of Twitter, replied by asking Thorleifsson, “What work have you been doing?” to which Thorleifsson responded saying he saved the company $500,000 on a software-as-a-service contract and led prioritization of design projects.
When Musk probed for more details, Thorleifsson identified the SaaS contract he saved the company money on as the design platform Figma and said his prioritization work related to “all active design projects.”
Musk proceeded to respond with two laughing face emojis and later tweeted a link to a clip from “Office Space,” a comedy…
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