Twitter engineer who was fired publicly by Elon Musk and locked out of his laptop calls the company a 'bunch of cowards'
Yasin Ozturk/Getty Images
- A Twitter engineer who was reportedly fired by Elon Musk told Forbes the firm was a "bunch of cowards."
- Musk had tweeted to say "he's fired" after Eric Frohnhoefer questioned him on Twitter.
- Frohnhoefer said the company had not formally spoken to him about his sudden dismissal, per Forbes.
A Twitter software engineer who was reportedly publicly fired by Elon Musk after an argument on the platform has spoken out about the company in an interview with Forbes.
Eric Frohnhoefer clashed with Musk on Sunday over the app's performance on Android devices. After Frohnhoefer tweeted Musk was "wrong," detailed his own work, and criticized Musk for not asking questions over email or Slack, the billionaire posted a since-deleted tweet: "He's fired."
Frohnhoefer later tweeted a picture showing he was locked out of his work laptop. In the caption, he said: "Guess it is official now."
In an interview with Forbes on Monday, Frohnhoefer said he had heard nothing from Twitter. The engineer told Forbes the company cut him off around 1 p.m. PT on Monday.
"They're all a bunch of cowards," added Frohnhoefer, who worked at Twitter for more than eight years, per his LinkedIn profile.
Musk tweeted on Sunday that he'd "like to apologize for Twitter being super slow in many countries" as the app was "doing >1000 poorly batched RPCs just to render a home timeline."
When Frohnhoefer said Musk was wrong, the billionaire challenged him to disclose what he had done to fix Twitter's performance on Android devices. Musk tweeted that Frohnhoefer was fired, but later deleted the tweet.
"My laptop just shut off and now I can't get back into it," he told Forbes.
Since Musk took over Twitter at the end of October, the company has "gone downhill," Frohnhoefer told Forbes. The engineer added that he was worried about how Twitter executives now treat its workforce. He said in the interview Twitter staff were more open and could express criticism but "now that's clearly not the case."
Twitter and Frohnhoefer didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
As the owner of Twitter, Musk has fired and laid off thousands of employees, from top executives to contractors. Some workers found out they were locked out of their work laptops the evening before the layoffs were due to be announced. Meanwhile, current employees said they've heard nothing from Musk and his close advisors since the layoffs, per WIRED.