Elon Musk has finally ceased the layoffs at Twitter and officially started hiring. However, no one would've expected that he would hire someone like George Hotz, considering that they have clashed before about his terms of employment for Tesla. But alas, here we are. Hotz is working for Twitter as an intern, being paid nothing but living expenses in San Francisco.
Hotz is also known for hacking the Playstation 3, which caught the attention of Sony and got him sued. If that wasn't controversial enough, other famous hackers like Anonymous and LulzSec emerged to defend the tech genius. Of course, Hotz has grown up since then.
Behind Former Enemy Lines
George Hotz is known for being the founder of Comma AI, a competitor to Tesla's autopilot software. That was after Musk claimed that one person or a small company cannot create autonomous driving software. Not only that, he is also known for jailbreaking the iPhone's carrier-lock. Now, he will be working on some of the glitches on Twitter.
The bad blood between the two had dissipated when Hotz agreed with Musk's email, which he sent to his employees stating that they need to be "extremely hardcore" to succeed with Twitter 2.0. This is the very same email with the form that employees needed to agree to, or pack up and leave with their three months of severance.
A Twitter user responded to Hotz, expressing that workers should be willing to serve as indentured ICs, all while taking as little capital as possible. In simpler terms, work a lot without asking much in return. Hotz responded by saying that he was up for a 12-week internship at the platform, and all he needed was the cost of living in San Francisco.
A Man With a Plan
As reported by Kotaku, the Comma AI founder has big plans for Twitter. He would be starting with the login popup, which appears after users have been scrolling for a long amount of time. He also aims to spruce up the relevancy of search results. All those plans and he will do it as long as Elon Musk puts a roof over his head.
All his goals are perhaps achievable, but not just for one man. Reports say that he tried to make others to follow in his footsteps, asking for help without cost. It's not exactly encouraging for users to hear about a major platform in shambles asking for free help. The engineers who would have been a great match for the project are long gone, included in the long list of Twitter employees fired by the tech billionaire.
It seems that the criticism regarding Hotz's "indentured" voluntary work has reached him, and he tweeted about it. He stated that the responses have been odd, and that the negativity was about Twitter and Elon, not him. He said that it was not just "free work" and that he was having fun. He added that he was there to learn as well as improve things.
Either way, Musk hit the jackpot with this. He has been looking for workers who would improve Twitter. A veteran like Hotz, who decided to work basically for free, has landed on his lap on a silver platter.
