Elon Musk took over X – formerly Twitter – in October 2022. Chesnot/Getty Images
A former Twitter developer claims he was unfairly fired after Elon Musk took over.
Randall Lin has been accused of leaking information to the press – an allegation that is said to be false.
Lin’s story is told in “Extremely Hardcore,” the new book by Zoë Schiffer.
This is a machine translation of an article from our US colleagues at Business Insider. It was automatically translated and checked by a real editor.
A former Twitter developer (now X) claims he was wrongfully fired after being accused of leaking information to the press.
Randall Lin was allegedly told that he had violated the employee handbook. He was then fired in February 2023, a few months after Elon Musk took over.
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Speaking to Zoë Schiffer for her newly released book “Extremely Hardcore,†Lin said that someone lied when they said Lin leaked information to the press. Schiffer is managing editor of the tech newsletter “Platformer”.
Lin was part of Musk’s inner circle
Lin joined Twitter as a machine learning developer in February 2020, at the age of 29. He was quickly promoted to staff engineer. However, he was dissatisfied with the company’s relaxed atmosphere under former CEO Jack Dorsey, writes Schiffer.
When Elon Musk took over the management of Twitter in October 2022, the developer was on board.
He was willing to live up to Musk’s high expectations of employees. He arrived at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco early and left after dinner to prove himself.
Lin earned the respect of the new CEO. He impressed him with the cost-saving vision that Twitter should develop its own graphics processors and regularly attended meetings about the direction of the platform.
When he took over Twitter, now known as X, Elon Musk laid off half the workforce. Noah Berger/AP Photo
Lin told Schiffer that he supported Musk’s decision Half of the workforce in November 2022 to dismiss, thought it was right. He also saw the job as an opportunity to make history alongside a visionary CEO.
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He is said to have never spoken to Schiffer before
However, as talented developers who were critical of Musk’s new policies continued to be fired, word leaked that employees at Twitter headquarters were dissatisfied.
On February 24, 2023, the company’s security team called Lin to a meeting.
The team apparently claimed to have evidence that he was the source behind two “Platformer” articles. These were written by Schiffer and a colleague. It was about a report about the firing of a developer who was critical of Musk and about Musk’s tweets after the Super Bowl were boosted.
“I’ve never been with Zoé in my life.” [Schiffer] “Speaking,” he told the security team.
Schiffer confirms this in the book. She says she had never spoken to Lin at the time. She also assumed that since he was so close to Musk’s inner circle, he wouldn’t talk to her. But Lin’s laptop was confiscated and he was fired the next day.
His technical skills weren’t enough to save him
As Lin left the office, a colleague allegedly told him that James Muska cousin of Elon Musk, said that Lin admitted to publishing dozens of articles.
Fearing he would be sued, he contacted Schiffer for more information. She couldn’t tell him anything, but provided the names of two lawyers representing Twitter employees.
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“The firing was so devastating to me because I did many things to appease Elon and protect my people and employees from him. “I really didn’t like the fact that they didn’t do that for me,” he tells Schiffer in the book.
“I realized that I was being valued technically. But somewhere along the way, someone lied about me. And my technical skills weren’t enough to save me.â€
Lin continues to insist that he was not involved in leaking information, Schiffer writes in her book.
But his story only shows “the complicated game that everyone had to play if they wanted to exist in Musk’s inner circle,” she writes.
X has not yet responded to Business Insider’s request for comment.
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