Twitter employees say they were fired after criticizing Elon Musk

A wave of Twitter employees — several of whom criticized the platform’s new owner Elon Musk — said they were abruptly fired overnight Tuesday.

The employees, who were on Twitter’s engineering teams, reported receiving an email that said: “Your recent behavior has violated company policy.”

One former software engineer who had criticized a statement Musk made Sunday about Twitter’s app speed said Tuesday that she had been fired, adding: “kiss my ass elon”.

Another former engineer also reported being fired, days after criticizing Musk’s decision to lay off other Twitter staffers:

Others said they weren’t exactly sure why they had been fired:

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment on how many people were affected, and what company policy they violated.

Musk reacted to the reports on Twitter by saying he “would like to apologize for firing these geniuses,” adding, “Their immense talent will no doubt be of great use elsewhere.”

The terminations may have stemmed from employees criticizing Musk in internal company Slack channels, according to Platformer, which reported that around 20 people had said they were fired because of Slack posts.

On Monday, Musk publicly fired a Twitter engineer after the two engaged in a back-and-forth on the platform about Twitter’s app speed.

“Just woke up to the news that more Tweeps were summarily fired last night,” that engineer, Eric Frohnhoefer, tweeted Tuesday. “At this rate no one will be left to run Twitter.”