World’s richest man and Twitter boss Elon Musk has apologized to an employee he unceremoniously fired. The dispute began with physically challenged designer Haraldur Thorleifsson, who claimed he was laid off without prior notice. After a series of back‑and‑forth messages with the CEO, Haraldur confirmed to his followers that his employment had been terminated. Musk responded by accusing the “independently wealthy” employee of doing “no actual work,” tweeting, “He 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. But was he fired? No, you can’t be fired if you weren’t working in the first place!”
A Twitter user, @danielhoughton, who said he had worked with Haraldur, defended the designer and asked Musk to reconsider his stance. On Wednesday, Musk revealed that he called Haraldur after seeing Houghton’s comment in order to get to the root of the matter. He further apologized for how he had handled the issue, writing: “Based on your comment, I just did a video call 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. I would like to apologise 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.”
Haraldur is a physically challenged creative designer who runs a nonprofit organization that builds wheelchair ramps in Iceland. He founded the full‑service creative agency Ueno, which was acquired by Twitter in 2021. Musk has faced criticism for massive layoffs shortly after acquiring the company in 2022; he fired about half of Twitter’s global workforce in November 2022.
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