Chris

Haraldur Thorleifsson sold his company to Twitter and took his fee as employment and a salary, deliberately so as to pay a generous amount of tax to the Icelandic government. He said he had done well out of the Icelandic welfare state and wanted to give something back, so avoided ‘tax efficient’ vehicles like share options.

However, if he was ever fired from Twitter the total outstanding amount of the purchase price would become payable. Around $100 million I believe. For this reason his name was likely to have been on a VIP ‘do not fire’ list and in a normal, functional head office someone in HR would have been on top of all this and he never would have got fired.

Twitter, however, is highly dysfunctional and an awful lot seems to be occurring at the whim of Musk who doesn’t seem minded to listen to his own experts or do any fact checking until his actions come back to bite him on the bum. Musk has tried to claim that the issue was resolved when he explored the issues around the sacking for himself rather than believing what he was being told by other people, but as an explanation that’s poor. If he’s not getting accurate information about a sacking that would cost the company $100 million, he needs to understand exactly why that is. Is he only listening to what he wants to hear? Are people so scared of losing their own jobs they will only tell him what he wants to hear? Has he already sacked so many people that there’s nobody left with the appropriate skills or experience to advise him well?