A lot to learn on how to act like a decent person
Why This Billionaire Fires A Twitter Employee He Believes Fakes His Disability
You can’t get any lower than that Elon
I don’t have any memory of my grandfather walking. All I have of him was him seating in a wheelchair, he didn’t speak, but he made sounds. It was a far cry from the man, my mom described him to be before he had a stroke.
In the last three years of my mom’s life, she had to be in a wheelchair. One day she wasn't able to stand and walk on her own. But my memory of her would always be the woman standing tall as she took care of all of us, her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
It would have pained me if someone mocked both my mother and grandfather for being in a wheelchair.
And this is what Elon Musk did to Haraldur Thorleifsson — he mocked his disability publicly on Twitter. He performed in front of his loving fans, and once again he proved to the world how big of an a*$hole he is.
Casey Newton and Zoë Schiffer of The Platformer broke the story, I read it in its February 28 issue.
Last week, Twitter managers started receiving unexpected calls from Steve Davis. A longtime associate of Elon Musk’s — he began working at SpaceX in 2003 — Davis is currently CEO of The Boring Company. Since loaning himself out to Twitter last year, Davis has emerged as one of Musk’s top lieutenants there.
Who on your team is exceptional? Davis asked managers when they got on the phone. Who would you bet your job on? — Excerpt, In latest round of Twitter cuts, some see hints of its next CEO
Many thought that the annual bonus was coming, how could it not be? It had been promised by the billionaire himself, no more job cuts, and if you perform well, you get more stock grants.
Instead what happened next was more people were fired, including founders of companies bought by Twitter long before the billionaire took in the kitchen sink with him as he walked through the doors of the Twitter HQ on October 27, 2022.
Among the more notable layoffs in this round were founders of companies that Twitter had acquired under its previous owners. Haraldur Thorleifsson, Martijn de Kuijper, Leah Culver, and Esther Crawford had previously been on a “do not fire” list, because it was going to be so expensive to pay them out: as part of their compensation packages, the founders had accelerated stock vesting. All four were cut over the weekend.
Chris Reidy, the company’s acting head of sales, also was cut, a source said. — Excerpt, In latest round of Twitter cuts, some see hints of its next CEO
When I first read the story and did a quick search of the names mentioned, I didn’t know that I would find Haraldur Thorleifsson here.
He writes like all of us who come here to share our stories. I was thinking should I or shouldn’t I write about — How the billionaire fired a Twitter employee for his disability?
When that wasn’t in the story by Casey, and only after reading this story by Halli about Room 250 that I got to know about his disability.
Before we begin, let me tell you a couple of things. First, a few years ago I started an agency called Ueno. Second, I’m in a wheelchair. That’s it, those are the two things you need to know before you read on. — Halli
Go check out the story about Room 250, It is about diversity and inclusion and how he didn’t want to inconvenience anyone or be the “guy in a wheelchair.”
It was beautifully written because it was true.
We all have our own Room 250.
Now, to understand why this is a big thing for me you need to know my history. I have muscular dystrophy. For me that meant that for the first 25 years or so I was walking and for the last 15 I’ve been in a wheelchair.
When I was walking I had what some people would call a funny walk.
And as you can imagine I was teased for that. Not a lot, because I had a big mouth, but enough to make me extremely self conscious. As a result I got excluded from certain things, sometimes by others, but often, and that’s actually in many ways worse, by selecting myself out because I didn’t want to be embarrassed.
When I started using a wheelchair, some things got better, and some things got worse.
Leading up to that point it was getting harder and harder for me to walk. My legs were losing a lot of their strength. So, using a wheelchair made me able to be more mobile than before. But now there were new obstacles.
And over the last 15 years those obstacles have directed the course of my life in many ways. And to know me you need to know them.
You need to know about the time my friends went back-packing through Asia and I wanted to go so bad that it physically hurt. But I couldn’t because the hostels and trains were not accessible.
You need to know that I once went to Disneyland and after looking for a while I finally found a ride that I could take. Only to find out, after waiting for 30 minutes in line, that it actually wasn’t accessible. I had dared to think I could participate and I was so devastated when I found out that I couldn’t that I broke down crying in front of my daughter. I was 37 years old. — Excerpt, Room 250
This was written in 2018, three years before Twitter bought his company, and long before the billionaire paid billions of dollars to buy Twitter.
If you would like to skip the next part which is the Twitter thread, you can click here. But why would you?
Dear Elon Musk,
Haraldur Thorleifsson started his tweet, all because he wasn't quite sure if he was still a Twitter employee or not.
I’m posting the whole thread so that someday people can look back at how a billionaire responded to an innocent tweet.
Dear @elonmusk
9 days ago the access to my work computer was cut, along with about 200 other Twitter employees. However your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am an employee or not. You’ve not answered my emails. Maybe if enough people retweet you’ll answer me here? — Halli
Hi @jack
I would really appreciate your help on this one. My company was acquired on your watch and I joined because I believed in what you were building. — Halli
Jack Dorsey didn’t reply, but Elon did and it got ugly.
What work have you been doing? — Elon
I would need to break confidentiality to answer this question here. If you have your lawyers share in writing that I can do that then I’d be happy to discuss that openly! — Halli
It’s approved, you go ahead — Elon
Among others: — led the effort to save about $500k on one SaaS contract. Supported closing down many others — led prioritization of design projects across the company to make sure we were able to deliver with a small team — Halli
- led design crits to help level up design across the company — was hiring manager for all design roles — worked on efforts to steer the company away from focusing on power users and on to younger users (because our user base is aging) — Halli
I could go on. Am I allowed to talk about how the company has operated since you took over? — Halli
But the original question was if I was still employed or not since you or your head of HR haven’t been able to answer that yet. But she did just miraculously reply so I finally have confirmation that I no longer work at Twitter!! — Halli
Now the next question is if you will make sure I get paid what I’m owed per my contract?! — Halli
A tweet from Alex Cohen,
The reality is that this guy (who is independently wealthy) did no actual work, claimed as his excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from typing, yet was simultaneously tweeting up a storm. Can’t say I have a lot of respect for that. — Elon
It’s obvious he did all middle management work from that exchange but I personally would not put an ex employee on blast and force them to prove their worth in front of 100m+ people — Alex
He has a prominent, active Twitter account and is wealthy. The reason he confronted me in public was to get a big payout. From what I’ve been told, he’s done almost no work for the past four months, middle-management or otherwise. Despite his claims on Twitter that he did work, it turns out he told HR that he couldn’t work because he couldn’t type, but was, over the same period, typing up a storm on Twitter. Yet there are many people on Twitter defending him. This hurts my faith in humanity. — Elon
I created a pdf file of the whole thread, you can read it here.
And then something unexpected happened?
Based on your comment, I just did a videocall with Halli to figure out what’s real vs what I was told. It’s a long story. Better to talk to people than communicate via tweet. — Elon
I would like to apologize to Halli for my misunderstanding of his situation. It was based on things I was told that were untrue or, in some cases, true, but not meaningful. He is considering remaining at Twitter. — Elon
Halli has muscular dystrophy but that didn’t stop him from working
Yes, he is a self-made man. He is probably rich, richer than most of us here. And yes, he has muscular dystrophy.
But he’s not asking for special favors from the billionaire, he only wanted answers. To be publicly ridiculed, and for the billionaire’s fans to attack Haraldur Thorleifsson because anything the billionaire says on Twitter is taken as fact by his supporters is inexcusable.
And when he apologized, some of his defenders argue it was all because he has Asperger’s Syndrome.
It could be true. But he does it all the time, to shame people is something he had done not once but many times over.
He gets something out of it, a high maybe especially when his tweets reach millions of his die-hard fans.
Final words
Recently I have been sick, and still am, to be honest. I couldn't write, the brain fog was terrible and so were the persistent headaches. Tomorrow, I would see my doctor again, the nth time in a span of six weeks.
During that time, I was able to post a tweet or be on Facebook. I wasn't feeling ill 24/7.
What I’m saying is, we judge people very quickly, and we look at people with disability as if they don’t try enough to do the kind of work people without a disability does.
Elon said,
If he was so sick, why can he tweet?
That has been answered here.
I saw this IG post from Quentin Quarantino
Today I learned my hero’s name is Haraldur Thorleifsson— @quentin.quarantino
“My family is the best. I have two kids. I see them every day. I recommend that.”
“I independently made my money, as opposed to say, inherited an emerald mine.”- Halli
😂😂
And also this tweet from Wonder Woman herself, Lynda Carter,
Reminder that disability is a spectrum. It is sad to see so many disabled people accused of “faking” because they can walk, type, or engage in physical activities sometimes. — Lynda Carter
An apology is always a good thing if it is meant. That apology is not mine to accept, and that is true for the rest of us who are not a party to the conversation. It is between two adult men, and it is up to Halli to accept it or not.
The bigger conversation is about diversity and inclusion. It is also how we view the world through our lens. Have we asked ourselves lately and can we answer this question honestly,
How do we see people with disability?
And we can change the words — “ with Disability” to ‘with Aspergers,’ ‘who are Republicans,’ ‘who are Democrats,’ ‘who are gay, ’‘who are women’, ‘who are Black or Asian.’
How would you answer these questions? And how would Elon Musk answers those questions?
When I was starting here, I wrote an article about — Alt Txt, it was important to me because it was about inclusivity, and by doing it changes the way the blind and visually impaired would ‘see’ photos on social media.
Nobody wanted to publish it.
I ended up self-publishing it, and it was my first story to be chosen for further distribution.
The reward wasn't with the reads, it only got a few.
It was during the pandemic, and it was easy to be lost in what was happening and lose that part of you that cares for people other than yourself.
I ended up the piece with,
We are all connected.
And it is true to this day, we are all connected. And if we don’t raise our voices when there are mean people, our silence becomes collective silence and with that, it only empowers those whose voices are louder only because it's the only voice they hear in their heads.
Thank you for reading.
Sources In the latest round of Twitter cuts, some see hints of its next CEO
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