Can someone explain Elon's response to the following thread? I genuinely don't understand, is there actually something funny about that answer or is Elon just being a dick?

Elon: "Which SaaS contract exactly? Prioritization of what design projects?"

Halli: "Figma. All active design projects."

Elon: "[crying laughing emoji][crying laughing emoji]"

I think it's Elon's response to his "all active design projects" claim.

I'd be surprised if he led "the prioritization of [all] design projects across the company to make sure we were able to deliver with a small team" and Elon doesn't know who he is.

Also his first claim was he led the effort to cancel Figma, which sounds ridiculous in several ways.

Elon just being a dick

It sounds like this guy was just not a valuable employee but was pretending like he made a difference. He had a chance to talk himself up and still had bullshit to say.

It kinda surprise me how people will defend employing people who contribute nothing. Twitter almost drove itself into bankruptcy hiring a ton of useless roles that had nothing to do with the core product.

What is bullshit about Figma, I don't get it?

I don't get how you are coming to the conclusion that this guy wasn't valuable? I know nothing about him but based on his website [1] he seems pretty accomplished:

- I started an agency called Ueno. I ran it for seven years before it was acquired by Twitter in 2021... - At Ueno we designed digital brands and experiences for companies like Airbnb, Apple, ESPN, Dropbox, Facebook, Google, NY Times, Oculus, PayPal, Uber, Venmo, Visa, Walmart, and many more - ...And let's not forget I was person of the year in Iceland in 2022

Also, Twitter was not almost bankrupt before Elon bought them, that is silly.

[1] https://www.haraldurthorleifsson.com

A person can both be very good at something but also completely useless to the company as company priorities/needs change.

I'm frankly not sure why Twitter needs to own an entire design agency (presumably they've acquired all the staff) especially in 2021 when their design was already set in stone and hasn't changed significantly since then (so indeed, what has this guy been doing?).

Now, I'm not defending Musk here and especially not this childish reaction - he should be following the accepted protocol for making employees redundant instead of cutting them off and laughing at them publicly on social media.

Well if had value to twitter he wouldn't have been fired.

There's a pretty easy way to get rid of people who aren't working, even if we assume that this person wasn't. You fire them. But while the bar for what constitutes a sane firing varies between companies and countries, "tell the person they're fired" is pretty universal.

I'm not sure I'd want to work somewhere that's actively drawing management strategy from Office Space.

There's a very good chance his position was indeed bullshit considering he ran an entire design agency that Twitter acquired (especially given Twitter's - terrible - design didn't even change after that fact) which seems way overkill for Twitter (why do they need an entire design agency?), however that still doesn't excuse Elon's behavior. There is a due process that needs to be followed to make roles redundant, and laughing at your employees publicly on social media is frankly nasty regardless of how bad the employee is.

Looking at his tweet however https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1632913642982191105, has Twitter's design changed at all in the last 2 years, let alone for good, to justify any of this was actually valuable? It's the same UX shit-show it turned into since their last major redesign several years ago and has all the flaws of "modern" design which is making up for lack of functionality and attention to detail with copious amounts of whitespace.

Again, not blaming the employee - if he was allowed to run around for 2 years not contributing anything, it's not the employee's fault but a problem higher up the chain. But his role does sound bullshit.

Honestly, this reads like a very reductionist view of a large company. I barely use Twitter, so I can't speak to any design changes. However, both the Twitter subscription and Community Notes rolled out very recently. The platform works across web and mobile and in a variety of languages. I'm assuming there are many non-public interfaces for other parties, such as advertisers, as well.

The person had to ask via public tweet if you are still employed or not.

If you would follow Tesla, you would find out that this is normal as people are @ at CEO to help them to fix their cars.

It gets even worse, Elon follows this up by actively outing personal health information and questioning Halli's disabilities on the basis of their use of social media (glass houses?) [1]. Seemingly completely unaware that the guy was a former owner and acqui-hire.

Really showing how awful a place like Twitter is to work these days.

[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1633011448459964417