Haraldur Þorleifsson sweeps person of the year awards
icelandreview.com
icelandreview.com
Feels more like to gut Musk. Dude had a firm aquired to Twitter in '21. and is one of largest tax entity in Iceland. He got Musk saying he's terminated due to disability[1].
He deliberately asked HR repeatly that his JD is correct and his manager if he’s doing the task he was assigned while he was employed[2]. No one will ever do this unless he’s preparing for lawsuits.
He’s likely to be in the period of his acquisitions and termination like this gonna be very expensive
Dude is out for blood and Musk falls for it. It's going to be a very expensive tweet for Musk.
[1] https://twitter.com/stevanzetti/status/1633096176219160584
[2] https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1633082731172069379
I'm not sure he's even out for blood, doesn't really seem to be the MO of someone who sells a company for millions and decides to take wages instead of stock just so he'd pay more taxes (he was one of the top icelandic taxpayers in 2021, but much further down the list of top incomes).
More likely wants to know where he's standing (figuratively, sadly) as he's apparently been spending weeks of the little time he still has trying to get answers from HR.
I like that he got Musk to basically admit publicly he's being fired because he's disabled and they won't accommodate him, though. Only thing I wonder about is whether Halli likely working under Icelandic law makes it worse or better than if he'd been covered by ADA.
[1] https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1629853233798696963
He got his work computer cut 9 days ago, which is probably why he was in contact with the head of HR to confirm his employment status.
I think he was never happy with Elon’s management style (nor Elon as a person), and I wouldn’t be surprised if he is extremely happy to so publicly expose Elon for how he treats his workers, and if he can get Elon to pay for it, even better.
The fines aren't nowhere near high enough. If we were talking about GDPR-level fines (like 5% of yearly revenue for repeat or egregious offenders!), now that would have some teeth... but the reality is, he's just going to offload paying the fines onto Twitter, it won't even hit his personal bank account. Or it will end like Musk's SEC drama, with nothing more than a tap on the wrist and him completely ignoring the mandates (he was supposed to not tweet anything stock-related directly but run that through a supervisor, but IIRC never did so).
It's high time that executives and owners get held accountable with serious fines for violating labor laws - and not just ADA/HIPAA as may be the cause here, but also wage theft, OSHA violations (East Palestine says hi) or union-busting activities.
Musk said he got terminated for not doing any work. If you're not doing your part because of your disability and get fired then is that discrimination? Because in that case wouldn't that mean that you're just stuck with dead weight you inherit from other people's hiring decisions? What about passing on a candidate who has a disability that prevents them from performing adequately? Genuine questions if anybody knows the law.
Those roles do tend to proliferate far beyond their actual utility in large organizations.
It was not preventing him from doing his work, it was preventing him from doing other unrelated work he was being moved to because of musk's nonsense.
> You realize it's perfectly possible to type and code using voice control, with the right setup?
While I think it's perfectly possible to type and code with motor issue (though I also think that would not be sufficient for Musk), Halli was not hired as a dev, he was acquihired when twitter purchased his company, his job is in management, clients rel, wheeling and dealing, and probably design given his site (and that Ueno was a creative agency).
Unfortunately, that is not necessarily the case. I've known the experience of a few people experiencing disability over my time, and discrimination is so shockingly common that you learn to keep a record of everything just to survive in your job.
Well a previous one cost him 44 billion dollars, so I think he's okay with this one.
The reality is that this guy (who is independently wealthy) did no actual work
Musk claims Þorleifsson did no actual work using his disability as a reason for why no actual work was being done.
Laws vary country to country and even state to state in the U.S. Generally speaking in the U.S., the ADA requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for disabled employees. The ADA is a great thing that allows people of varying abilities to contribute tremendously to society.
This isn't complete protection for employees though. A blind person is not likely to be hired as an air traffic controller, for example. And they're not likely to be retained if they were an air traffic controller and developed blindness.
From what the Twitter feed said, it looks like the guy did actual work and was successful at it.
The only fault I have so far is him asking HR to confirm that he was conforming to the requirements of his job. That should be his manager because HR doesn't know they only go based off of what the manager says the role should be doing.
But that could be an impossible task because of the organizational chaos that Twitter famously has right now. He might not have a manager.
I do think that this is a violation of the civil rights act. Maybe not ADA.
"I help Twitter appeal to young people" "That's my job".
How I remember the Twitter thread anyway
I wonder if he also has voclaization difficulties that interfere with voice typing, and/or if he was socialized against "talking to himself" like I was.
(Or if Twitter has the same problem as HN+Android+Firefox+? where the keyboard microphone and swipe goes inexplicably missing sometimes, like now for me.)
But holy moly the horrific way Elon/NewTwitter went about the whole thing.
Question: if every US citizen/permanent resident refuses to work for Twitter because of how horrific it is and the pay isn't worth it, is that sufficient basis to get approval to hire H1Bs with lower standards?
I’d be surprised if the hit to his net worth from the purchase as less than $80B
He gets to be in the public eye and news all the time. Gets to be defended by fanboys while making fun of disabled people and laughing at design people who work with Figma. He gets to delist anyone he dislikes. This role gives him power and attention on a global scale.
Seems like a great investment of $80B if that floats his boat, which it seems to.
1. Appeal broadly to as many people as possible.
2. Appeal strongly to a subset of people.
#1 is more principled and idealistic, and produces more stable results, but it's more difficult.
#2 is easier - it also allows greater focus and frankness - but it increases conflict and instability, since to be effective it usually involves not just ignoring, but explicitly antagonizing those outside or opposed to the chosen subset.
Typically option #1 is the safer bet, but the more divided your audience becomes, the greater the effectiveness of option #2. Also, #2 is just more appealing if you, personally, already have an affinity for the chosen subset. Musk is taking option #2, and his chosen subset are "trolls", for lack of a more specific word. Obviously you could reasonably call tons of people on all sides of all issues "trolls", because there's no shortage of petty people for any given disagreement. I'm referring to a specific subset of people who jump quickly to hatred and mocking others, and do so to their face, or in public, or on social media. People who don't simply act shitty when an argument breaks out, but rather who make "asshole" a part of their overall personality (take a look at the Musk-supportive Tweets for prime examples). Normally this is a small group, but the more divided people become, the more individuals fall into this group.
In other words, imagine person A says to person B, "I'm so sorry you weren't notified," and then privately explains the decision to fire them. That's generic option #1 stuff. Now let's say person A laughs and antagonizes person B. There is a default social contract that basically says, "if you antagonize somebody in a way that maximizes pettiness/obnoxiousness, you will repel almost everybody, because even the people who agree abstractly with you won't want to be associated with such childish, revolting behavior." However, the more division increases in your audience, then if persons A and B are perceived to be in different "groups", the more people in the same perceived group as person A will be willing to explicitly stand with them in that pettiness/obnoxiousness. That's how option #2 becomes more viable.
Now, Elon Musk won that legal case, but perhaps he wouldn't win a case where he challenges Hari's legitimacy.
However, I seem to remember that Musk followed up the insult with some insinuation that he might know something about the guy which makes it worse. But I don't care to read up on the details at the moment.
I’m just genuinely stunned that anyone would behave this way. I used to be such a big fan of the accomplishments of SpaceX (I still remember where I was when they successfully stuck the landing of the Falcon 9). Elon’s behavior just… gives it all such a sour note. It’s impossible for me to be an unabashed cheerleader for SpaceX anymore. I will certainly never be giving any of his companies a penny of my money, though.
Guy wasn't random, he critically put his life on the line to save 13 teenagers.
Up until then I could've built stories to defend him. He's shit to his employees buuuuuuut he built successful companies, so maybe the two are connected? But the pedo story was indefensible. There's no explanation other than his bad character.
More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35060935.
The gist of it is that he had been locked out of his workstation for 9 days, and after failing to get a response from Twitter’s HR, he resorted to asking Elon on Twitter.
You can see the thread here: https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1632843191773716481
NewTwitter is the Monty Python Holy Grail credits incarnate. "Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked, have been sacked."
If this was shared the day the article had been published, would it have received any upvotes? No.
@dang Perhaps the link should change to a news story about the actual incident people are talking about
Right, it gained relevance because of current events. Lots of articles posted to HN are months old. I found the story interesting because I had no idea who this person was until yesterday, opting to pay 4.2 million usd in taxes is certainly unique, and he seems to be the 'main character' on twitter today because of his convo with Elon.
On the plus side—since this submission is about Halli—Halli has been using his personal wealth to build 1500 wheelchair ramps in Reykjavík. His efforts have been quite successful. I wonder if there are people or organizations in California that are engaging in similar actions.
https://sanjosespotlight.com/access-v-abuse-crema-coffee-in-...
eg https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2021/08/10/spate-of-ada-...
or:
> Conservatively assuming an average settlement figure of $10,000 per case, Defendants have extracted over $5,000,000 from California’s small businesses from the cases filed on behalf of just one of their serial filers in just over two years,” the complaint says. The district attorneys believe the firm has systematically drained California businesses, many owned by immigrants who do not speak English or fully understand the vagaries of the American legal system, out of millions of dollars over the past four years.
https://www.courthousenews.com/law-firm-accused-of-ada-shake...
If they actually cared about accessibility, they'd just tell the owner to fix it. Instead they sue them extracting thousands in settlements.
That this is flagged is completely unsurprising. Musk's pathetic army of supplicants have reached the stage they hit with Trump where they are so incredibly embarrassed by his antics, yet think they've painted themselves in a corner supporting him, that they try to even suppress the whole topic. That to talk about them is some sort of derangement syndrome, lest people actually note how utterly insane, incompetent if not criminal their heroes are.
To be an Elon Musk apologists now betrays that someone is just a horrendous human being. Absolutely used toilet paper levels of humanity.
The charitable view is that the flaggers are tired of reading more examples of Twitter's now well-known mismanagement (at this point, really, nobody should be surprised).
HN is exclusively my source for tech news, and this flagging almost caused me to miss the story entirely. I don't necessarily want to see a million threads about Elon's incompetence either, but this feels newsworthy to me and it seems like it should rise above the general "Elon does something dumb" background noise.
It's not exactly known if he actually still is on Twitter's payroll. Besides even if he still were, it keeps him from pursuing actual productive work, alone from non-compete clauses.
Very odd…
Is this supposed to be somehow bad? Seems like clearly a pro-social thing to say
> You know what? I'm doing well enough. I want to contribute back to my society in the same proportion and democratic manner as the people who work under me.