Elon Musk fires developer on Twitter after he questioned chief's assessment

Twitter chief Elon Musk fired an engineer who had been working at the social media platform for years publicly after he pointed out how Musk's assessment was wrong.

The billionaire posted an apology on Twitter for the app being slow in many countries. He said that the microblogging platform was doing ">1000 poorly batched RPCs just to render timelines".

A developer working on Twitter for Android for years, Eric Frohnhoefer, said on Twitter that Musk's assessment was flawed. As a response, the Tesla CEO asked Frohnhoefer what the correct figures were and what steps the engineers had taken to fix issues.

Since the discussion was public on Twitter, people started reacting to the tweets and poured in many memes as well.

Some developers supported the Android developer while others said he should have told his boss of the issues "privately". However, Frohnhoefer said that Musk should have asked privately.

"Maybe he should ask questions privately. Maybe using Slack or email."

"True, he brought it up in public first," a netizen commented.

While the chaotic thread was going on, one of the users tagged Musk and asked him if he even wants "this kind of attitude" on his team. 

Musk, who is known for being very active on social media, responded to the thread and said "he's fired". The developer replied with a salute emoji and changed his Twitter bio which now reads: "Android developer open to new opportunities. Formerly @twitter."

Interestingly, Musk's tweet was deleted after a few hours. 

The SpaceX CEO has taken many controversial steps since he acquired Twitter in his famous $44bn deal. He reportedly fired 90% of the Indian staff. In India, the company has just over 200 employees, while the huge cut has left just over a dozen of its staff at present, a Bloomberg report said. Musk also ended remote work for the employees expecting them to work from office only. 

He also introduced a subscription for verified handles, charging $8 from the accounts. Musk, who is known for his sense of humour, banned parody accounts and killed the "official" check for prominent personalities and organisations.

The Twitter staff reported working 80 hours a week to complete assigned tasks on the given deadlines. Some said they had to sleep on the office floor because they could not go home due to the workload. 

Some changes were rolled back by the billionaire who said on Twitter that there would be a lot of "dumb mistakes" on the platform. "We will keep what works & change what doesn’t," he wrote.

On Monday, he shared that he had "too much work" on his "plate", adding that he was working morning till night, "seven days a week".