After Open Debate On Twitter, Elon Musk Pecat Eric Frohnhoefer

Eric Frohnhoefer, Twitter engineer who challenged Elon Musk, argued on Twitter. (photo: @EricFrohnhoefer)

JAKARTA - Twitter has made thousands of layoffs, departures and resignations of employees since Elon Musk took over the social media platform. But one of the latest staff changes seems to be private. This new Twitter CEO tweeted that Eric Frohnhoefer, an employee who publicly argued with him on the platform, had been fired.

The story begins on Sunday, November 13th when Musk tweeted an apology for Twitter being slow in "many countries" and implied that poor performance was because the app made more than 1,000 long-range procedure calls "worked badly" to load the home timeline, which basically says that apps should reach other servers many times and wait for responses for each request.

Frohnhoefer, who tweeted that he spent six years working on Twitter for Android, cited Musk's retweeted statement saying it was not true. Musk has done the same thing several times in response to news about his company, but unlike that example, Frohnhoefer has actually continued to provide an explanation as to why he thinks Musk's tweet is wrong.

As the former tech lead for timelines infrastructure at Twitter, I can confidently say this man has no idea wtf he's talking about https://t.co/ZaVWpzqMxU

— Ben Leib (@bgleib) November 13, 2022

According to Frohnhoefer, Twitter doesn't actually make long-distance procedural calls, or RPCs. Instead, he said, when the app was running, the app made about 20 background requests. It seems to clarify its original tweet, Musk then replied, "The fact that you don't realize that there are up to 1,200'micro services' that people call when using the Twitter app is not good."

Frohnhoefer disagreed again, and tweeted that "the number required to generate the homeline is close to 200 rather than 1200."

Guess it is official now. pic.twitter.com/5SRwotyD8J

— Eric Frohnhoefer @ 🏡 (@EricFrohnhoefer) November 14, 2022

The conversation between Musk and Frohnhoefer is messy, scattered in many threads and clocks which ironically makes Twitter difficult to see and follow. At one point, Musk asks Frhnhoefer what he has done personally to fix Twitter's slowness on Android, although it should be remembered that conversations start with Musk's apology for being slow in "many countries", not on Android. But Musk's last words seem to come up in response to discussions about whether Frohnhoefer should have expressed his concern about the original tweet personally on Slack rather than publicly calling Musk out.

A commentator in the thread said Musk may not want Frohnhoefer on his team after developers tweeted that Musk should ask questions about the problem of personal slowdown, Musk immediately replied, "He was fired."

Frohnhoefer did not immediately respond to The Verge's request for comment on whether he had been contacted by the Twitter HR team or had heard anything other than Musk's tweet.

Musk has received resistance from some people about his tweets, including from other Twitter employees. One person who identified themselves as a quote from the Twitter technology leader retweeted it, saying, "You don't just stop almost all the infrared and then make my own comments about how we do the grouping."

Technological leaders also accused Musk of not learning about how GraphQL works and not knowing how Twitter's infrastructure works. Commendators outside the company also questioned the tweet. Musk said he got information about the RPC from some Twitter engineers and said the former employee was wrong.

If Musk was wrong about how Twitter works, it wouldn't be the first time. On Sunday, November 13 he tweeted that the site was "the largest click drive on the Internet so far", a statement nearly everyone who owns a website immediately denied and knows how great Google and Facebook are.

Twitter users also use Birdwatch, a feature that allows you to show misinformation on the site, to correct Musk. He then deleted the tweet.

Regarding the impact of the fight, Musk has announced that at least one feature, a label that says from which device or app the tweet was posted, will be cut in the performance name.

So far, Musk has not answered any other advice Frohnhoefer has made about improving performance, including reducing unnecessary features and reworking on systems that hinder the app.

As for Frohnhoefer himself, he tweeted that he was "absolutely stupid" to confront Musk as he did, although he didn't appear to be too worried about being sacked. He has started applying for a new job at another company. On Monday night November 14 US time, Frohnhoefer finally tweeted that he had been officially fired from Twitter.