A former Twitter engineer claims he was unfairly fired due to persistent leaks of news shortly after paranoid Elon Musk bought the social media site, according to a shocking new book.
The engineer, Randall Lin, was fired last February after Musk accused him of violating a nondisclosure agreement, Zoe Schiffer writes in “Extreme Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk’s Twitter.” ing. Business Insider previously reported.
In a new book released Tuesday, Lin accuses Schiffer, a former tech reporter at The Verge and Platform, of throwing dirt on Mr. Musk’s chaotic October 2022 Twitter takeover. accused.
During a meeting with Lin, Twitter’s corporate security team at the time provided evidence that Lin was the source for two articles Schiffer co-authored for the Silicon Valley-focused news site Platformer. He claimed to have grabbed it. One It detailed the firing of another engineer who had criticized Musk. another About Mr. Musk’s tweets becoming more active after the Super Bowl.
“I’ve never talked to Zoe.” [Schiffer] According to an excerpt of the book first reported by Business Insider, Lin told his security team:
The San Francisco-based company, which has since rebranded itself as “X,” confiscated Mr. Lin’s laptop and fired him the next day.
Schiffer wrote in his 352-page book that he never spoke to Lin at the time.
But after he was fired, Lin told Schiffer that he had been a supporter of Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, and that the company’s management under then-CEO Parag Agrawal He said it was because he didn’t like the relaxed atmosphere.
Lin also supported Musk’s decision to lay off half of the social media site’s staff a month after taking office.
BI said Lin, who was hired as a machine learning engineer in 2020 at the age of 29, told Schiffer that he saw his role as an opportunity to make history.
A year after leaving the company, Mr. Lin has been linked to dozens of profits by James Musk (Mr. Musk’s cousin, who was brought in with his brother Andrew after the billionaire’s takeover). They came to believe that he was spreading rumors that he had admitted to leaking the information. Schiffer elaborated on articles across mainstream media, according to BI.
Separately, Ben Mezrich’s book “Breaking Twitter,” which was released in November last year, discusses Musk’s acquisition of the platform, and states that James Musk decided to leave the company because he was worried that he would be fired. There were also reports that he was once found “basically sobbing” at his San Francisco headquarters. Just as easily as anyone else. ”
Lin told Schiffer: “My firing was very shocking to me because I had done a lot to appease Elon and protect my subordinates and colleagues from Elon.” The fact that they didn’t do it for me was really uncomfortable for me. ”
“I had been evaluated technically, but somewhere along the way I realized someone had lied about me and my technical skills were not enough to save me,” he said, according to BI. added.
Schiffer wrote that Lin’s story shows “the complex game that everyone must play if they want to exist in Mr. Musk’s inner orbit,” BI reported.
Representatives for X did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
