Elon Musk fires a Twitter engineer who admits he knew the Android app was slow but never bothered to fix it: “He’s Fired”

Elon Musk didn’t become an overnight billionaire by accident. He not only outworks most people but also outsmarts them with laser-focused execution and achieving results even when all cards are stacked against him.

Musk’s work ethic was on display after he tweeted an apology on Sunday for Twitter being slow in “many countries,” implying that the poor performance was because the app does over 1,000 “poorly batched” remote procedure calls to load the home timeline.

Immediately after Musk tweet, Sam Pullara @sampullara replied to explain the issue to Musk:

“The real issue imho is they undid server side rendering and you have to download tons of code just to see a single tweet. Other countries are slow because of the round trips and initial download and not so much from the backend since everyone shares that.”

The real issue imho is they undid server side rendering and you have to download tons of code just to see a single tweet. Other countries are slow because of the round trips and initial download and not so much from the backend since everyone shares that.

— Sam Pullara (@sampullara) November 13, 2022

In response to Sam, Musk wrote: “l I was told ~1200 RPCs independently by several engineers at Twitter, which matches # of microservices. The ex-employee is wrong. Same app in US takes ~2 secs to refresh (too long), but ~20 secs in India, due to bad batching/verbose comms. Actually useful data transferred is low.”

I was told ~1200 RPCs independently by several engineers at Twitter, which matches # of microservices. The ex-employee is wrong.

Same app in US takes ~2 secs to refresh (too long), but ~20 secs in India, due to bad batching/verbose comms. Actually useful data transferred is low.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 14, 2022

It was after this tweet that Twitter employee Eric Frohnhoefer responded to Musk’s statement saying that he’s spent six years working on Twitter for Android, adding that Musk’s statement was wrong.

“I have spent ~6yrs working on Twitter for Android and can say this is wrong.”

I have spent ~6yrs working on Twitter for Android and can say this is wrong. https://t.co/sh30ZxpD0N

— Eric Frohnhoefer (@EricFrohnhoefer) November 13, 2022

In back-and-forth tweets, Musk politely asked Frohnhoefer to please correct him and share what the right number was.

“Then please correct me. What is the right number?” Musk asked.

Then please correct me. What is the right number?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 13, 2022

Considering he had been working on the app for about 6 years, Musk went on to ask him what he had done to fix the problem.

“Twitter is super slow on Android. What have you done to fix that?”

Twitter is super slow on Android. What have you done to fix that?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 13, 2022

It was after this tweet that a Twitter user Ryan Arsenault told Musk to stop tweet-trolling and instead talk to his employees in person.

Hey – since you own Twitter now – maybe talk to your employees in person versus tweet-trolling?

— Ryan Arsenault (@ryanarsenault) November 13, 2022

The last thread from Frohnhoefer finally sealed his fate.

I think there are three reasons the app is slow. First it’s bloated with features that get little usage. Second, we have accumulated years of tech debt as we have traded velocity and features over perf. Third, we spend a lot of time waiting for network responses.

— Eric Frohnhoefer (@EricFrohnhoefer) November 14, 2022

For a cold start of the app there are ~20 requests to load home timeline. Most of the requests are non-blocking and happen in the background. This includes things like images, user settings, hashflags, etc.

— Eric Frohnhoefer (@EricFrohnhoefer) November 14, 2022

It was after this that another user suggested to Frohnhoefer that he should inform his boss privately. To which he replied, maybe Musk should have asked the questions privately.

“Maybe he should ask questions privately. Maybe using Slack or email.”

https://twitter.com/ericfrohnhoefer/status/1591990727852298245

Unfortunately, Frohnhoefer’s mistake cost him his job. Musk finally responded with the last tweet saying Frohnhoefer has been fired.

“He’s fired,” Musk tweeted.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1592186302379982849