The Twitter executive who was seen in a viral photo sleeping on the ground at headquarters as Elon Musk imposed his “extremely hardcore” work culture has been fired, in line with reports.
Esther Crawford, a holdover from the old regime who reportedly gained Musk’s trust and elbowed her way into the reclusive mogul’s tight inner circle, was given the boot over the weekend, in line with The Information.
Sources told the tech news site that Crawford and a number of other other product leaders learned they were fired after they were locked out of their company systems over the weekend.
Crawford took to social media late on Sunday night and responded to the torrent of criticism from Twitter users who noted that she got the axe despite her loyalty to her recent boss.
“The worst take you may have from watching me go all-in on Twitter 2.0 is that my optimism or labor was a mistake,” Crawford tweeted.
“Those that jeer & mock are necessarily on the sidelines and never in the sector,” she said, referencing a famous quote by Theodore Roosevelt.
“I’m deeply pleased with the team for constructing through a lot noise & chaos.”
Several Twitter users accused Crawford of being “sycophantic” while others snarked that it was a “real shocker that sleeping within the office wasn’t enough.”
Crawford, who was entrusted to oversee the Twitter Blue subscription service, stood out because she was certainly one of the few of Musk’s trusted lieutenants who was not brought over from certainly one of his other firms — Tesla, SpaceX, and The Boring Co.
Crawford was certainly one of dozens of engineers, product managers, data scientists, and team heads who were let go, in line with the tech-centered news site. No less than 200 employees were laid off in the most recent round of cuts, in line with reports.
Martijn de Kuijper, a senior product manager based in Holland, tweeted that he, too, learned of his dismissal when he did not log into his corporate computer system.
“Waking up to search out I’ve been locked out of my email. Looks like I’m let go,” de Kuijper, who founded the Revue newsletter platform which was later bought by Twitter, tweeted.
“Now my Revue journey is actually over.”
Revue was shut down by Twitter in January.
The newest job cuts at Twitter seem like an indication that Musk is having difficulty meeting his goal of breaking even. Musk has culled his work force not less than eight times since taking the helm of the San Francisco-based microblogging site last fall.
Before Musk bought the firm, Twitter employed roughly 7,500 people. As of Monday, that number has been whittled all the way down to around 2,000 — an astounding 70% cut.
Musk’s social media company, which he acquired for $44 billion last yr, must make a $1.2 billion annual interest payment as per the terms of the mogul’s heavily leveraged buyout of the firm.
Musk said in November that the service was experiencing a “massive drop in revenue” as advertisers pulled spending amid concerns about content moderation.
Twitter recently began sharing revenue from advertisements with a few of its content creators.
With Post wires
