A senior Twitter employee says he spent 9 days trying to figure out whether or not he'd been laid off

• A Twitter director said he spent nine days trying to figure out whether or not he'd been laid off.
• Haraldur Thorleifsson said he emailed Elon Musk and Twitter HR but got no response.

A senior Twitter employee said he spent nine days trying to figure out whether or not he'd been laid off by the social-media company.

Haraldur Thorleifsson, a former Twitter director based in Iceland, engaged in a public spat with Elon Musk on Monday after questioning the Twitter owner about his employment status at the company.

"You have every right to lay me off," Thorleifsson said in a tweet to Musk. "That's totally fair and fine. But usually people are told when that happens. Maybe with a letter or something. Which didn't happen for 9 days despite multiple emails to you and others."

Three minutes after posting the tweet, Thorleifsson said he'd received confirmation that he no longer had a job at Twitter. "Again, that's totally within your rights," he said. "No complaints. But can you make sure I get paid what I'm owed?"

In another tweet, Thorleifsson said Twitter's head of HR had emailed to tell him he'd been laid off.

Twitter and Thorleifsson didn't immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.

Earlier on Monday, Thorleifsson tagged Musk in a tweet saying he'd lost access to his work laptop nine days ago but was unable to confirm whether or not he'd been laid off. Thorleifsson said Twitter's head of human resources had failed to confirm on two occasions whether he still worked there, and that he'd emailed Musk about the matter but received no response.

Musk later responded to Thorleifsson's tweet and said: "What work have you been doing?" This sparked a fractious back-and-forth between Thorleifsson and Musk.

Thorleifsson founded Ueno, a creative agency that Twitter bought in 2021. According to Thorleifsson's LinkedIn profile, after the acquisition, he worked as a director at Twitter based in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Platformer reported on February 28 that Thorleifsson was one of four senior managers who'd been put on a "do not fire" list because it would be too costly to pay them off. All four were fired anyway, the report said.

The four were among the roughly 200 Twitter workers who were cut during the latest round of layoffs, according to Platformer. Musk has cut thousands of Twitter staff since completing his $44 billion acquisition of the company in October.

Similar to Thorleifsson, other former Twitter employees who were laid off said they were locked out of their work laptops and emails amid the layoffs.