I spent part of Thanksgiving day talking to a Twitter engineer, who found out late last night that he had been fired by Elon Musk.
He is on an H-1B visa and spent today searching for a new job. If he doesn't find one in 60 days he will be deported. Here's his story:
He asked to stay anon to preserve his future job prospects and not antagonIze Musk.
Like many H-1B holders, he studied in the US and stayed in the country by finding a job in the tech sector. He was an engineer at Twitter. He loved his job, his team, and his manager.
When Musk announced his intention to purchase Twitter, he remained open minded that the billionaire could drive effective change.
But he no longer thinks that, and believes the company is on a bad path because Musk treats solving Twitter as an engineering problem.
To be clear, engineering is critical at Twitter. But what Musk doesn't understand, he says, is that is is the people — the communities — that make Twitter. If you lose those people because users or advertisers lose trust, then the platform falls apart.
Bear in mind, this is *after* he had opted in last week to stay at Twitter, after Musk gave employees the option to leave w/ 3 months of pay/severance.
He said he did this because of his immigration status. He wanted to be sure he could stay in the US.
nytimes.com/2022/11/17/tec…
He and others I've spoken with say that many who opted into Musk's "Twitter 2.0" did so because of visas. Others did so while on parental leave. Some have now been hit in the pre-Thanksgiving firings. He estimates "dozens" tho it could be as high as 50.
twitter.com/ZoeSchiffer/st…
Zoë Schiffer@ZoeSchiffer
Nov 24 22
View on Twitter
Hearing that roughly 50 Twitter engineers were abruptly fired last night and dozens more received warnings:
The firings come after Musk said Monday that there would be no more layoffs during an all-hands meeting. The engineer says that the loophole was that he was fired.
Other colleagues received notice of placement on performance improvement plans, he adds.
twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/s…
Gergely Orosz@GergelyOrosz
Nov 24 22
View on Twitter
Just in: the night before Thanksgiving, Twitter fired more software engineers effective immediately because their "code is not satisfactory" following the recent code review.
Dozens of other devs got performance warnings in their inboxes.
How much do Twitter devs have to take?
For now, he's job hunting and exploring legal possibilities with his colleagues. If all else fails, he'll be moving out of the US in about two months.
On Thanksgiving, I'm thankful he and others are sharing their stories. Hope everyone has a more peaceful holiday.
If you'd like to get in touch:
twitter.com/RMac18/status/…
Ryan Mac 
@RMac18
Nov 15 22
View on Twitter
Since the man we're reporting on owns this platform, if you have a tip or want to talk about what's going on at Twitter, hit us up on the NYT signal at +1 646-951-4771.
Or here are some other ways to contact us (plz access on non-work connected devices): nytimes.com/tips
Ryan Mac
@RMac18
tech reporter @NYTimes. ryan.mac@nytimes.com & rmac18@protonmail.com. DMs open. On Signal: +1-949-315-9364
Missing some tweets in this thread? Or failed to load images or videos? You can try to .