Posted on 11/09/2022 8:17:05 PM PST by DoodleBob
A former Twitter Inc engineer has accused the company of firing him days after it was acquired by Elon Musk because he developed a tool to allow workers to save important documents in anticipation of mass layoffs.
The engineer, Emmanuel Cornet, filed a complaint with the U.S. National Labor Relations Board on Monday claiming he was engaged in protected activity when he shared the software on an internal Twitter messaging channel....Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the complaint.
Cornet, who was based in San Francisco, said in the complaint that he was fired on Nov. 1, a few days before Twitter began laying off about half of its 7,500 employees in a cost-cutting bid by Musk, the world's richest person.
Cornet and four other Twitter employees had filed a lawsuit in California federal court on Friday accusing the social media company of violating federal and California laws requiring employers to give 60 days' notice before engaging in mass layoffs.
Musk in a series of tweets on Friday said Twitter workers who were laid off were offered 90 days of severance pay, which could satisfy Twitter's obligations under the notice laws.
Cornet in the complaint said that late last month, amid rumors of mass layoffs at Twitter, he developed a Google Chrome extension to allow employees to download emails from their Twitter accounts. That would ensure workers could save important documents such as statements reflecting their stock in Twitter, performance reviews, and other human resource documents, he said.
Cornet says he was fired on the same day that he published the extension and posted a link to it on an internal Twitter messaging channel. Twitter removed the link later that day, according to the complaint.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Agreed.
Including stock statements?
Guy got exactly what he deserved.
He should be prosecuted and made unemployable.
Corporate theft and maybe espionage? Fired is only first step hopefully.
Sounds like it.
Ok, I am confused.
Back in the days when I was a cog in the Mega-Corp Machine I always kept a hard copy of all those things in my personal files at home.
I also kept any letters of commendation, certificates of achievement for any training I took and a list of official duties.
Is this not considered SOP anymore?
The day I got to the date I gave my notice and filed for retirement I lost my network access including my email. And that is as it should be.
You can’t do that. Period.
Forget firing, you can be prosecuted.
There are typical “best practices” data transfer restrictions now, such as prevention of forwarding emails tagged “internal” (sometimes) to external recipients, or downloading things to personal USBs, etc. But printing a document should still be possible.
Those emails are corporate property. Guilty.
Agreed. Our enterprise has this warning at logon:
This computer system is for authorized only.
Any unauthorized access or use may result in legal
prosecution.
Yep. They had no business saving those documents. It was theft.
Didn't say he didn't. But are your personal Twitter stock statements available 'publicly'?
important documents such as statements reflecting their stock in Twitter, performance reviews, and other human resource documents, he said.
Sure seems like that if the company sends you an email concerning the amount of stock you have vested, the amount of vacation you have coming, or the amount of sick leave you've accumulated, you have a right to a copy of that.
Now as far as company emails about projects, assignments, or internal operations, I agree with you. But I think there's a dividing line between personal and company business.
Sabotage. This is the type of person who must be fired.
Also any paperwork relating to your PTO or any company stock bought by you should be considered your personal property even if the company provided it.
So I am not seeing why Twitter would object to their former employees having copies of those records.
Now it is possible that they were downloading other documents that were not relating to their employment.
That would be a problem and I suspect that is what was happening but if as presented there should be no problem.
The current state of corporate security policies is what it is. Ideally there should be a means for ex-employees to obtain such personal records, probably through an HR access point, but company email generally is made unavailable.
Insider espionage, or something like that..
As ye old expression goes -— “Thank God and Greyhound he’s gone” (acutually a Roy Clark tune?)
This is the corporate version of “he was a good boy on his way to college”...
Never trust someone who has just been caught doing something fishy.
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