She worked for Twitter. Then she tweeted at Elon Musk.
Sasha Solomon, a software engineer, joined others in the media industry who lost their jobs this year after publicly clashing with their employers.
In the middle of a workday, Sasha Solomon, a 34-year-old software engineer in Portland, Oregon, put her French bulldog, Bosworth, on a leash and walked down a leafy street for a favorite coffee.
It looked like an ordinary November afternoon, or as ordinary as it could get for someone working at Twitter under its mercurial new owner, Elon Musk. Mrs. Solomon ordered a latte for herself and a filter coffee with cream for her husband. Then she and Bosworth went home.
Sitting at her computer on the sofa in her living room, she tried to check the latest messages on Slack, only to find that his account was locked. She then opened her work email account or tried. Also locked. She logged into her personal email account and saw something in her inbox from an HR manager on Twitter.
"Your recent behavior violated company policy,” the email read: according to Ms. Solomon. She turned to her husband and said, as she recalled in a recent interview, "I guess I don't work here anymore."
With That, Ms Solomon had to be among a small number of media industry employees who lost their jobs this year after using Twitter to attack the institutions where they worked. In Ms Solomon's case, she directly challenged her boss in a series of tweets. She said she didn't know if those tweets caused her to lose her job or if she was just one of about 3,700 Twitter employees who were made redundant shortly after Mr Musk took over. of the company in October. /p>
When Ms. Solomon was growing up outside of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, she never imagined she would end up working at a big-name company , let alone with a multi-billionaire, she told me. Even when she was studying computer science and math at the University of Idaho, she thought she would stay in her home country for good, she said. But then a friend landed a job at a tech company in San Francisco and suggested she look for work there. Ms. Solomon was hired by a Bay Area startup and soon moved into a software engineering role at Medium. In December 2018, she started working at Twitter.
She joined the so-called core services group, which oversees the platform's digital infrastructure. His specialty was GraphQL, a query language at the heart of Twitter's application programming interface. After a while, Ms. Solomon represented Twitter at events and conferences, she said. "I started speaking in public a lot," she said.
In October 2020, she and her husband, Mike Solomon, who were also working on Twitter, got permission to work remotely and moved to Portland from San Francisco. Earlier this year, she says, she was promoted to manager, a role that put her in charge of about 10 engineers. "I had a lot of opportunities to grow," Ms. Solomon said.
She loved the corporate culture of the company. "Twitter has always been about open expression," she said. “Internally, we have always been very talkative. If you have something to say, you never had to worry about repercussions."
Ms. Solomon filled her own Twitter feed with a standard mix of silly, irreverent and serious Earlier this year, she posted lyrics to a love song about Diet Coke, photos of herself and her husband dressed for a Renaissance fair and links to job postings on Twitter.
Sasha Solomon, a software engineer, joined others in the media industry who lost their jobs this year after publicly clashing with their employers.
In the middle of a workday, Sasha Solomon, a 34-year-old software engineer in Portland, Oregon, put her French bulldog, Bosworth, on a leash and walked down a leafy street for a favorite coffee.
It looked like an ordinary November afternoon, or as ordinary as it could get for someone working at Twitter under its mercurial new owner, Elon Musk. Mrs. Solomon ordered a latte for herself and a filter coffee with cream for her husband. Then she and Bosworth went home.
Sitting at her computer on the sofa in her living room, she tried to check the latest messages on Slack, only to find that his account was locked. She then opened her work email account or tried. Also locked. She logged into her personal email account and saw something in her inbox from an HR manager on Twitter.
"Your recent behavior violated company policy,” the email read: according to Ms. Solomon. She turned to her husband and said, as she recalled in a recent interview, "I guess I don't work here anymore."
With That, Ms Solomon had to be among a small number of media industry employees who lost their jobs this year after using Twitter to attack the institutions where they worked. In Ms Solomon's case, she directly challenged her boss in a series of tweets. She said she didn't know if those tweets caused her to lose her job or if she was just one of about 3,700 Twitter employees who were made redundant shortly after Mr Musk took over. of the company in October. /p>
When Ms. Solomon was growing up outside of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, she never imagined she would end up working at a big-name company , let alone with a multi-billionaire, she told me. Even when she was studying computer science and math at the University of Idaho, she thought she would stay in her home country for good, she said. But then a friend landed a job at a tech company in San Francisco and suggested she look for work there. Ms. Solomon was hired by a Bay Area startup and soon moved into a software engineering role at Medium. In December 2018, she started working at Twitter.
She joined the so-called core services group, which oversees the platform's digital infrastructure. His specialty was GraphQL, a query language at the heart of Twitter's application programming interface. After a while, Ms. Solomon represented Twitter at events and conferences, she said. "I started speaking in public a lot," she said.
In October 2020, she and her husband, Mike Solomon, who were also working on Twitter, got permission to work remotely and moved to Portland from San Francisco. Earlier this year, she says, she was promoted to manager, a role that put her in charge of about 10 engineers. "I had a lot of opportunities to grow," Ms. Solomon said.
She loved the corporate culture of the company. "Twitter has always been about open expression," she said. “Internally, we have always been very talkative. If you have something to say, you never had to worry about repercussions."
Ms. Solomon filled her own Twitter feed with a standard mix of silly, irreverent and serious Earlier this year, she posted lyrics to a love song about Diet Coke, photos of herself and her husband dressed for a Renaissance fair and links to job postings on Twitter.
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