World’s richest man and Twitter boss, Elon Musk, has apologised to one of his employees who was unceremoniously fired from the company.
The tech mogul engaged in a war of words with the physically challenged designer, Haraldur Thorleifsson, who claimed he was laid off without being informed.
After a series of back and forth with the CEO, Haraldur confirmed to his followers that his employment had been terminated.
Musk doubled down on his attacks and accused the “independently wealthy” employee, of doing “no actual work”.
“(He) claimed as his excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from typing, yet was simultaneously tweeting up a storm. Can’t say I have a lot of respect for that. But was he fired? No, you can’t be fired if you weren’t working in the first place!” Musk tweeted.
Replying to the remarks, a Twitter user, @danielhoughton, who claimed to have worked with Haraldur defended the creative designer and asked Musk to reconsider his stance.
On Wednesday, Musk revealed that he called Haraldur after seeing Houghton’s comment in order to get to the root of the matter. He further apologised to the ex-employee for how he had handled the issue.
Based on your comment, I just did a video call with Halli to figure out what’s real vs what I was told. It’s a long story. Better to talk to people than communicate via tweet.
“I would like to apologise 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 is considering remaining at Twitter,” he wrote.
Haraldur is a physically challenged creative designer who runs a non profit organisation that builds wheelchair ramps in Iceland. He founded a full service creative agency, Ueno, which was acquired by Twitter in 2021.
Musk has come under criticism for massive layoffs shortly after acquiring the company in 2022. The billionaire fired about half of Twitter’s global workforce in November 2022.