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Ex-Twitter Workers Puzzle Over Elon Musk’s Abandoned Laptops

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Ex-Twitter Workers Puzzle Over Elon Musk’s Abandoned Laptops

Twitter recently auctioned off an estimated $1.5 million of furniture and equipment from its San Francisco headquarters, down to trifles such as keyboards and USB dongles. But the company has left tens, or potentially hundreds, of thousands of dollars’ worth of shimmering assets to gather dust in former employees’ homes.

Some people laid off or fired by Musk are puzzling over why Twitter hasn’t bothered to collect their corporate laptops, the latest head scratcher in a takeover characterized by botched product launches, abrupt policy changes, and delayed paychecks.

Eric Frohnhoefer, a California software engineer fired in November after confronting Musk via tweet, says he has not heard a peep about returning his company-issued Apple MacBook Pro M1 Pro laptop from 2021 (8/10 WIRED Recommends). “It’s still sitting in a closet,” he says. Like the laptops of thousands of remote Twitter employees that Musk has terminated or let resign since early November, his was digitally locked, rendering it useless.

Refurbished versions of his model can still fetch around $1,000, and new ones retail for twice that. Frohnhoefer does not feel indebted to Musk and is in no rush to return the machine. “I’m happy letting it sit there and be a brick,” he says.

Two other ex-Tweeps say they are less relaxed about their custody of Musk’s expensive paperweights because they are among the workers still owed severance, and they fear it could lead to further delays to their compensation, or even legal problems down the line. On ex-employee chat groups, braver souls have discussed attempting to crack their laptop’s lock code or wipe and reset the device, one of those sources says.

When WIRED wrote to a Twitter email address for equipment returns that was shared by an ex-worker, an unsigned response came back after about three hours linking to the form and saying that further instructions and a box would arrive within 30 days of submission. One laid-off worker says they’re not rushing to fill it out. “Elon can wait.”

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