Musk backpedals after mocking disabled Twitter worker in tweet ‘storm’ | Hacker News Reader

Musk backpedals after mocking disabled Twitter worker in tweet ‘storm’

theguardian.com

34 pointsprawn27 comments

Even after everything I've seen before I still find Musk's casual cruelty shocking. Halli didn't say he was a good employee deserving of staying, he just asked if he was fired and politely answered Musk's questions. For no apparent reason Musk treats him like he's a joke and not a real person. And that continues even after Musk understands he is disabled.

I’ve said this before about Rupert Murdoch, and I’ll say it about Elon Musk - he’s a ruthless arsehole. This is not to say they aren’t highly intelligent, but that intelligence is not at all influenced by any kind of empathy whatsoever. They can, if required, perform a perfectly serviceable simulacrum of a reasonable person, for short periods of time, but they fact they believe they are the smartest people in any room, coupled with the fact they don’t believe they are subject to the rules (moral, ethical or even legal) that the rest of us are, means any such simulacrum will be short lived and they revel in revealing themselves, caring not one iota how they are perceived by others. They are not part of society. They believe they sit outside of it.

What is intelligent about mocking a disable employee publicly and putting yourself at risk of a massive lawsuit?

Has he made similar undeserved comments about other people and gotten away with it? Some people believe they can manage extreme risks. And every time he gets away with something like this he’s proven right. Do I think it’s an I intelligent move? No.

I mean, define "getting away with it". I think that cave diver thing, and a couple of other incidents, have pretty comprehensively destroyed his reputation amongst a lot of people who previous thought he was pretty much fine.

(I do actually wonder if this latest obnoxious behaviour has done any significant damage, though; the previous stuff would already have turned decent people off him).

But: he did get away with it. And every time he gets away with it he sees that as confirmation that he should continue.

Well, the guy he attacked failed to get legal relief, but Musk's reputation was severely permanently damaged. I wouldn't call it "getting away with it", personally.

From Musk's point of view the legal bit is the only bit that matters. Until he has to pay up some substantial amount of money and is forced to do so it's a no-op as far as he's concerned. Witness the fact that he apparently didn't learn a thing from it.

In Musks mindset as far as I can read it the rest of the world is NPCs and what we do, think or feel doesn't matter to him as long as he isn't personally inconvenienced. He probably thinks because he 'won' the lawsuit that he came out ahead. And with his kind of money he can always stall and keep the legal game going until the other side has lost. Life gets a lot simpler if you can throw ethics and morals out of the window and are wealthy enough to manipulate things in the legal arena. Until he gets smacked down hard I predict this stuff will continue.

Oh, sure, from his own point of view he probably thinks he won that one. But, objectively, it was likely a big loss for him, even if he doesn't recognise it; the reputation of leadership is important to any public company, particularly if that reputation is publicly notably bad.

Has he lost any positions in business over it? Has he lost any investment over it? Have any of his board members punished him? I don’t think his reputation has taken a big hit at all. Finance people don’t care if they’re financing a horrible person.

Reputation of leadership is only important for a public company when it negatively impacts the stock price. The market doesn't care about your reputation, it cares about the stock price...

Donald Trump mocked a disabled person as a warm-up act in his presidential campaign. I used to think that sort of thing was disqualifying for leaders, but I'd say all the evidence would show that it is not.

Most of Musk's antics are just entertainment to me, but publicly shitting on your own ex-employee (and in some cases current employees) is just a shocking lack of grace. He just doesn't know when to stop being an asshole.

There are people out there who's brains are not wired to deal well with wealth and social media at the same time.

This got the headline right. The "apology" tweet is weak, conditional, and shifts blame to a nameless, faceless set of people who told him things. No word on whether these supposed blameworthy people who led Elon into an enormous liability still work at Twitter.

Hmm, is this the first time he's apologised publicly for _anything_?

I assume some PR person (being Musk's PR has to be the worst white-collar job in the world) finally got it through to him that even by his standards, this was a bit beyond the pale.

Not PR person, lawyers with a copy of Halli contract.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90591604/twitter-has-acquired-it...

https://www.axios.com/2021/01/06/twitter-acquires-design-age...

Apparently he sold his startup to Twitter with payment deferred as his own salary. Firing triggers payment in full.

He apologized for spreading despicable conspiracy theories about the attack on Pelosi's husband, but one would think he will stop being a cretin after walking into the same electric fence multiple times. A brainless life form learns quicker than this - even Russian soldiers.

Too late. Not making a mistake is always better than correcting one.

All this is just emblematic of whats so unpleasant about Twitter, even if it wasn't an exchange between Twitter's CEO and a ambiguously ex employee.

Needlessly unpleasant. It appears that his intention is for it to exist in his image. Outrage and insult and misinformation. Instead of just replying to the employee's email!

Now that Elon apologized is it ok to ask why Twitter paid a design firm at least 100 million for an acquisition when presumably they already had a design department and team that was internal to Twitter?

The internal team was crippled by ineffective executives, so they acquired a new team... that got crippled by the same executives.

Also there's no evidence that it was $100M.

$100M, due on termination, which provides some color as to why the employee in question was asking Twitter HR to confirm their employment status.

https://mas.to/@fsinn/109984180905588540

https://twitter.com/williamlegate/status/1633176820072816640

Sorry to repeat myself, but that tweet provides no evidence.

Incredibly, a whole bunch of news sites are using that tweet as evidence, and other sites are then using those sites as evidence of evidence.

e.g. [1] says "As per a buy-out clause included in the contract of Ueno’s acquisition" which links to [2] which, you've guessed it, links to that tweet as evidence of the $100m buyout / severance.

(As far as I can find, Twitter never disclosed the terms of the Ueno acquisition and no-one else seems to have published them either. Hilariously LeGate later explains his numbers to someone asking by saying, basically, "I pulled them out of my arse". A true Muskian move.)

[1] https://www.bosshunting.com.au/hustle/elon-musk-firing-halli...

[2] https://www.benzinga.com/news/23/03/31250643/elon-musk-backt...

The 100m amount is not based on anything concrete

“ typical acquihires in the engineering space are priced at $1 million / head, and his company had 50-100 employees from what I read. So the $100 million figure is an educated guess based on what I’ve seen to be industry standards”

https://twitter.com/williamlegate/status/1633183689659105288...

Amazing how easily a big round number gets shared as fact.

Hiring a working, performing team is easier than making yours perform at the same level. Does it work? Few times, but the reasoning remains.

Apple acquihires tons of companies that we get to see the results after a few years.

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