Ever since Elon Musk completed $44 billion deal to take over Twitter at the end of October, the company's headcount has decreased through layoffs and resignations to a tiny fraction of its original number. Now amid this, the "Chief Twit" has hired Geroge Hotz, the man who rose to instant fame for hacking iPhones in 2007, as a Twitter intern for 12 weeks.
According to a Twitter conversation between Mr Musk and Mr Hotz, the former iPhone hacker has been hired to fix the "broken" search feature on the platform and remove the non-dismissible login pop-up that appears if one is trying to browse. Mr Hotz received the offer from Twitter's new boss after he appreciated Mr Musk's ultimatum to Twitter employees to go "extremely hardcore" or leave.
"This is the attitude that builds incredible things. Let all the people who don't desire greatness leave," Mr Hotz said. "I'll put my money where my mouth is. I'm down for a 12 week internship at Twitter for cost of living in SF. It's not about accumulating capital in a dead world, it's about making the world alive," he added in a separate tweet. To this, Mr Musk responded with an offer to talk. "Sure, let's talk," he wrote.
In another post, Mr Hotz informed that he has been taken up on his offer. He clarified that he has been hired as an intern at Twitter for 12 weeks to fix the microblogging site's "broken search". "Also trying to get rid of that non dismissable login pop up after you scroll a little bit ugh these things ruin the Internet," Mr Hotz wrote.
Meanwhile, as far as Mr Hotz's background is concerned, he is a security hacker known for developing iOS jailbreaks and reverse engineering Play Station 3. According to Tech Crunch, Mr Hotz has also founded Comma.ai - a driver assistance system startup that aims to bring Tesla Autopilot-like functionality to other cars - after getting into a fight with Mr Musk after he allegedly tried to hire him at Tesla but "kept changing terms".
Back then, Tesla stated that Mr Hotz's bold claims that his tech could beat that of Autopilot were "extremely unlikely". However, the former iPhone hacker promptly set out to prove Mr Musk and the rest of Tesla wrong.
