In the annals of Silicon Valley dysfunction, few stories capture the inertia of a tech giant quite like Twitter’s protracted battle to implement an edit button—a feature users had clamored for since the platform’s early days. Haraldur Thorleifsson, a former Twitter employee known on X as Halli, recently shared a revealing thread on the platform, pulling back the curtain on the internal chaos that plagued the company before Elon Musk’s acquisition. According to Thorleifsson’s post on X, he was tasked with assembling a team for the edit button just two weeks after joining Twitter in 2021, highlighting a feature that had long topped user wish lists but remained elusive due to bureaucratic hurdles.

Thorleifsson described a design process that was remarkably swift, completed in about a day, but the real ordeal began when it came to execution. Twitter’s structure, he claimed, was antithetical to innovation: “anyone at the company could say no to an idea and it would be killed.” This sentiment echoes broader critiques of the company’s pre-Musk era, where layers of management stifled progress. It took four months of persistent advocacy just to secure an engineering estimate, which came back at a staggering 18 months for what Thorleifsson called a “simple feature.”

The Bureaucratic Quagmire That Stalled Innovation

Negotiations eventually whittled that timeline down to eight months, but the resulting product was “extremely flawed and limited,” per Thorleifsson. Posts on X from users like Halli further elaborate that the focus was on fixing typos within a one-hour window to prevent misuse, such as bait-and-switch edits that could alter context after virality. Yet, the process was marred by internal resistance, with Thorleifsson noting in follow-up posts that even big tech peers like Facebook moved faster on comparable projects.

This inefficiency wasn’t isolated. A 2022 article in The Guardian reported that Twitter had been experimenting with the edit button since 2021, testing it among Twitter Blue subscribers, and explicitly denied that Elon Musk’s public polling on the feature prompted the work. Musk, who joined Twitter’s board in April 2022 after acquiring a significant stake, had tweeted a poll asking if users wanted an edit button, garnering massive engagement. But company statements at the time insisted the initiative predated his involvement, aligning with Thorleifsson’s timeline of internal development struggles.

Leadership Turmoil and Credit Disputes

By the time the edit button launched in late 2022, the original heads of design and product who assigned Thorleifsson the project had been fired, and the new leadership claimed the spotlight. Thorleifsson recounted receiving an angry phone call after requesting credit for a key designer—a woman who had been involved from day one—underscoring a culture where recognition was politicized. “Twitter was the worst managed company I have ever experienced,” he concluded in his post, a damning assessment from someone who has worked with numerous tech giants.

These revelations come amid ongoing discussions about Twitter’s transformation under Musk, now rebranded as X. A Wikipedia entry on the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk details how Musk fired top executives upon taking control in October 2022, including CEO Parag Agrawal, and froze the codebase for review. This shake-up contrasted sharply with the pre-acquisition stagnation, where features like the edit button languished. Musk himself has since expanded the feature, allowing longer edit windows for verified users, though not without controversy over potential abuse.

Broader Implications for Tech Management

Industry insiders point to Twitter’s pre-Musk woes as a case study in how entrenched hierarchies can paralyze even straightforward innovations. A piece in the Harvard Business Review from October 2022 outlined principles for transforming legacy tech firms, emphasizing the need to prioritize objectives and rethink norms—advice that Twitter’s old guard seemingly ignored. Thorleifsson’s account, amplified by over 1.4 million views on X, resonates with former employees who have shared similar frustrations on the platform, painting a picture of a company bogged down by indecision.

Comparisons to other platforms abound. While Facebook (now Meta) implemented post-editing years earlier with safeguards like edit histories, Twitter’s delay fueled user exodus and memes. A 2023 analysis in The New York Times noted that Musk’s tweaks post-acquisition, including algorithmic boosts for his own tweets, accelerated changes but introduced new biases. Yet, Thorleifsson’s pre-Elon narrative underscores that the edit button’s saga was symptomatic of deeper issues: a fear of risk that prioritized vetoes over velocity.

Lessons From a Fractured Feature Rollout

Today, with X under Musk’s helm, the edit button has evolved, but its origins reveal the perils of mismanagement. Thorleifsson’s posts on X, including responses to skeptics, defend the complexity—acknowledging that backend integrations were non-trivial—but criticize the timeline as excessive compared to industry standards. For tech leaders, this episode serves as a cautionary tale: innovation thrives not just on ideas, but on structures that empower teams rather than entangle them.

As X continues to iterate, with recent updates allowing edits up to an hour post-publication for premium users, the contrast with its pre-Musk paralysis is stark. Sources like a Business Insider report from April 2022 hailed Musk’s board appointment as a catalyst, even if Twitter denied it. Ultimately, Thorleifsson’s insider perspective, corroborated by media reports, illuminates how one feature’s tortured path mirrored a company’s broader dysfunction, offering enduring insights for the tech sector.