Elon Musk appeared to lose his temper when asked to explain basic elements of his plan to "totally rewrite" Twitter's code on Tuesday night.
In a live panel discussion on Twitter Spaces, the 51-year-old tycoon claimed that the social network suffered from "crazy" software design and would need a top-to-bottom renovation in order to launch new features quickly.
But when Ian Brown, a software performance engineer at Netflix who previously worked at Twitter for eight years, asked for more details, Mr Musk refused to answer, and the discussion quickly broke down.
Mr Musk eventually resorted to calling Mr Brown "a jacka***", after which Mr Brown's microphone was cut off by the moderator.
The testy exchange came as Mr Musk sought to explain his rationale for firing more than half of Twitter's workforce and making a series of controversial policy decisions, many of which were swiftly reversed.
"This company is like you're in a plane that's headed towards the ground at high speed, with the engines on fire, and the controls don't work," said Mr Musk during the Twitter Spaces discussion according to Insider.
While admitting that his decisions "might seem sometimes spurious, or odd, or whatever," he said: "It's because we have an emergency fire drill on our hands, not because I'm like naturally capricious."
When Mr Musk claimed that Twitter's code needed a "total rewrite" in order to achieve "a really high velocity of features", Mr Brown, who has repeatedly criticised Mr Musk in the past, interjected.
"Wait, seriously? A total rewrite? That's your prediction for velocity?" Mr Brown said. He then pressed for more details, asking: "Revolution or reform?"
Mr Musk responded that Twitter's "stack" – a tech industry term for the multiple layers of specialised software that make up a complex online service such as Twitter – was "crazy" and needed radical changes.
Mr Brown insisted: "When you say crazy stack, what do you mean? Like, break it down?" There was a long pause, during which someone else in the discussion began laughing.
The Netflix engineer continued: "What do you mean by crazy? Come on, buddy... take me from top to bottom. What does the stack look like right now? What's so crazy about it? What's so abnormal about this stack versus every other large scale system on the planet, buddy?"
Mr Musk refused to elaborate, declaring: "Amazing. You're a jacka**."
Since buying Twitter for $44 billion in October, Mr Musk – originally a digital payments entrepreneur who made his fortune building rockets and electric cars – has repeatedly sparred with more specialised software engineers over how the struggling social network actually works.
He has declared that only radical change can save Twitter from financial oblivion, but his own decisions have caused many advertisers to pull their spending for fear that their brand will be tarnished.
