One former Twitter employee managed to win a settlement of over $600,000 after a ‘savage’ email from Elon Musk requiring employees to buy in to a new ‘hardcore’ working environment left him unemployed.
Elon Musk’s two years in charge of Twitter, now X, have certainly been a rollercoaster ride, and while the company has now lost lost 72% of the $44 billion that the tech mogul initially paid for it, it didn’t exactly get off to the right foot either.
Leaked emails showed that Musk wasn’t happy with the state of Twitter prior to buying it, and his opening statements to employees continued to assert this belief too.
In an email outlining his expectations for the company under his leadership, Musk explained: “Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore.
This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”
He then provided staff with a link that they needed to click to ‘buy in’ to his new project and keep their jobs, and failing to participate would terminate their contracts with three months of severance pay.
What’s more, Musk also only gave employees around 24 hours to respond to this email, which was the case for all global company members.
One such employee that didn’t click on the link in time was Gary Rooney, now former director of ‘source to pay’ at the Dublin Twitter HQ.
He claims he did see Musk’s email but thought that it was spam and subsequently ignored it.
He was shortly informed by HR that his failure to click the link was indicated as a decision to resign and accept voluntary redundancy, but Rooney decided to take his case for the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) in Ireland.
Rooney fought and won his case against Twitter, netting $600,000 in the process (Twitter/@curlygaz)
The report from the WRC showed that Rooney had never indicated that he wished to resign – despite the email’s indication that non-compliance would result in termination – and it also indicated that he had indeed opened the email at one point, discussing with another colleague that he needed to ‘step away’ and think about the decision.
Thankfully for Rooney the WRC fell in his favor, ruling that the 24 hours given by Musk wasn’t enough for such a decision to be made. Additionally, he was also awarded €550,131 ($607,802) as a result of lost earnings both between his termination and the case decision, and also in the future.
What was ultimately a cost-cutting measure by Musk following his purchase of the company ended up being more expensive in some ways, but his actions have reduced the employee count by around 80%, taking it from roughly 7,500 staff before his takeover to around 1,500 in April 2023.Featured Image Credit: Anna Moneymaker / Staff / Getty / LinkedIn/Gary Rooney
The Musk family is speaking out about President Donald Trump’s Trumpenomics tariff troubles, and with the POTUS accused of triggering a global trade war, it’s no surprise that the world’s richest man and his younger brother have plenty of opinions about the future of the USA.
Donald Trump had warned that he was going to levy harsh tariffs on enemies and allies alike, and after blanketing a 10% baseline tariff, he went on to bombard the likes of China, Vietnam, and the European Union with much harsher personalized tariffs.
He’s also been lambasted for hitting some of the remotest areas of the world with tariffs, despite them being populated by penguins.
For those thinking that Canada and Mexico made it out unscathed, remember that they were slapped with 25% tariffs earlier this year.
Elon Musk is among the 10 richest people in the world who have already been stung by the tariffs, and with Kimbal Musk being a major shareholder in the already struggling Tesla, he’s decided to speak out.
Elon Musk’s brother has made his feeling on the tariffs clear (NBC)
Delivering a scathing takedown of President Trump, Kimbal Musk said he was surprised that he’s become the “most high tax American President in generations.” Taking aim at the tariffs, Musk added: “Through his tariff strategy, Trump has implemented a structural, permanent tax on the American consumer.”
Saying that even if Trump is successful in bringing jobs back to America in terms of manufacturing, he warns: “Prices will remain high and the tax on consumption will remain the form of higher prices because we are simply not as good at making all things.”
Echoing a lot of concerns right now, Musk concluded: “A tax on consumption also means less consumption. Which means less jobs. Which in turn leads to less consumption. And then even less jobs.
“America has incredible strengths. We should play to those strengths, and not be forced to play to our weaknesses. Same with the rest of the world.”
Who would have thought that Trump was actually the most high tax American President in generations. Through his tariff strategy, Trump has implemented a structural, permanent tax on the American consumer. Even if he is successful in bringing jobs on shore through the tariff
As a former director of SpaceX, and considering his continued involvement with Tesla, Kimbal Musk isn’t afraid to air his concerns.
In 2025 alone, Tesla shares have dipped by a shocking 42% and it’s just recorded its worst quarter since 2022. It’s far from the boom the EV brand enjoyed in the aftermath of Trump’s election win and promises to make America ‘great’ again.
We did see Kimbal sell off a mass of Tesla stock, and although it was a pre-planned move, it didn’t exactly instill confidence in the company.
As the impact of the tariffs starts to come into view and trillions are wiped off the stock market, expect more like the Musks to speak out.
Elon Musk has already questioned the tariffs, and with fears that they could have a potentially devastating effect on the space industry, we imagine his role as CEO of SpaceX will soon have him speaking out again.
All of this comes as Senator Ted Cruz referred to Musk as an ‘angel’ trying to do the right thing at the White House.
Speaking on his podcast, the Texas Republican said: “Elon is one of the angels. This is a good, good voice that is focused on US jobs that I hope the president is listening to.”Featured Image Credit: NBC / Contributor / Getty
Elon Musk has had enough of being ridiculed, and we don’t just mean by Mike Myers’ Saturday Night Live impression.
After purchasing Twitter in October 2022, the tech billionaire has reshaped the social media platform in his own vision, famously stripping back community guidelines, changing verification, and removing the block button.
While Elon Musk has been accused of decimating Twitter in terms of its general spirit and its financials, it’s not his perfect platform just yet.
In his latest sweeping changes, the tech billionaire is clamping down on parody accounts and those impersonating people they aren’t. Good luck to the @GrimReaper account.
From April 10, these accounts must be branded with ‘fake’ or ‘parody’ at the start of their usernames.
Twitter previously allowed parody accounts if they were labeled for comedy, but since Musk took over and rebranded as X, it has struggled to stop the legitimate ones from those often used by scammers. After all, we’ve seen how easy it is scam people out of thousands while pretending to be Brad Pitt.
Musk has had enough of his impersonators (NBC)
Musk was criticized for the verified badge, which as well as legitimising journalists, could be used to determine celebrities from people pretending to be them. Since adding X’s Premium subscription package, anyone can put a blue checkmark next to their name.
Although X did introduce a ban on accounts impersonating others, Musk’s commitment to freedom of speech allowed a loophole for parody accounts – as long as they were labeled as parody.
You were supposed to mark yourself as a parody simply by putting a message at the end of your name, but due to character limits, many were cut off.
There have been many parody accounts of Musk himself, often trying to scam users with cryptocurrency schemes. One gained hundreds of thousands of impressions by asking users to like and comment to win a Tesla.
X has now deemed that parody accounts will have to put specific keywords in front of their name AND can’t use the same profile picture as the account they’re impersonating: “These changes are designed to help users better understand the unaffiliated nature of PCF accounts and reduce the risk of confusion or impersonation We encourage all affected accounts to update their profiles before the enforcement date.”
We’re rolling out updates to improve transparency for Parody, Commentary, and Fan (PCF) accounts on our platform. Starting April 10, all PCF accounts will be required to include PCF-compliant keywords at the beginning of their account names and avoid using identical avatars to
When the news was shared on X, there was an immediate backlash, with one person writing: “You created this mess, just give a separate check mark for official accounts.”
Another complained: “Why did it take so long to address this obvious problem?”
A third said: “Every single one of these accounts are engagement bait grifters, you should shadow ban their accounts to irrelevancy.”
Looking at the many other issues with X, someone concluded: “You need to stop letting blocked people read posts. Some of them are dangerous.”
Namely, the comments were full of examples of how people have been personally tricked, or know of people who have been tricked, by these so-called parody accounts. While this should be the beginning of the end for these grifters, something tells us it’s not.
