It’s hard to know which part of Parag Agrawal’s job as Twitter chief executive has been the worst, since he took over 10 months ago. There was the advertising downturn that left the social media company floundering as it tried to keep up with the overly ambitious financial goals he inherited. There was the uninvited takeover bid from Elon Musk that landed after less than five months, throwing the company into limbo and torpedoing any grand plans he may have had.

And then in May, after Musk first got cold feet about the $44bn deal and claimed Twitter was understating the number of spam accounts on its service, Agrawal laid out a detailed defence in a series of tweets. Musk’s response: a single poop emoji conveying his disdain.

Handling the irrepressible and mercurial Musk is not something any adversary would sign up for. That Agrawal faced down the world’s richest man and this week appeared to be on the brink of victory is likely to be the highlight of his stint at the top. But the low-key engineer who has suffered the indignity of Musk’s public insults is now facing likely ejection from his post — albeit with a $60.1mn golden parachute strapped to his back.