She had been made famous by a divisive and controversial hashtag. This hashtag had many experts say that she was close to Elon Musk.
Esther Crawford distinguished herself last November by posting a photo of her sleeping on the floor in the offices of Twitter.
She wanted to embody Musk's Twitter 2.0. The billionaire had just completed the acquisition of the social network for $44 billion. He had decided to revamp the platform which was losing a lot of money. He wanted to drastically reduce costs and asked employees to multiply their efforts.
When many employees were averse to sacrificing their private life for work, Crawford created the controversial hashtag #SleepWhereYouWork.
"When your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork," Crawford wrote on Nov. 2.
'Show Up for Them'
"Since some people are losing their minds I'll explain: doing hard things requires sacrifice (time, energy, etc). I have teammates around the world who are putting in the effort to bring something new to life so it's important to me to show up for them & keep the team unblocked," Crawford wrote in another tweet that day.
Despite all these sacrifices, Crawford did not last in the Musk era. She confirmed a report from Platformer's Zoë Schiffer that she is part of a new wave of layoffs that the microblogging website carried out over the weekend of Feb. 25.
"The worst take you could have from watching me go all-in on Twitter 2.0 is that my optimism or hard work was a mistake," Crawford said. "Those who jeer & mock are necessarily on the sidelines and not in the arena. I’m deeply proud of the team for building through so much noise & chaos."
A few hours earlier Schiffer had announced her departure.
"Just got confirmation that Esther Crawford, chief executive of Twitter Payments, is out," tweeted Schiffer, managing editor of Platformer, on Feb. 26.
In the Musk era, Crawford had emerged as part of the techno king's inner circle. She was notably the chief executive of the forthcoming Twitter Payments and oversaw several other projects in the company, including the Blue subscription service.
Besides Crawford, about fifty other employees were laid off, according to Schiffer.
"Hearing that the Twitter layoffs last night were well above 50 and hit multiple departments including engineering. If you know more, get in touch," she reported. "The layoffs last night included a ton of surprises. Hardcore Musk loyalists (more on that soon…) and the founder of the newsletter platform Revue that Twitter acquired in 2021."
Some employees confirmed on Twitter that they were fired.
Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.
Musk Is Looking for a New CEO
Since taking over Twitter, Musk has already laid off at least 5,200 employees. When he arrived, the firm employed 7,500 people. At the beginning of November, the billionaire laid off half of these employees in one day. He then caused the departure of more than a thousand of the remaining employees when he asked them to work long hours or to leave.
"Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore. This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade," the billionaire wrote in an email to employees on Nov. 16.
"If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below," he continued. "Anyone who has not done so by 5pm ET tomorrow will receive three months of severance."
Crawford's departure seems to suggest that Musk is cleaning up, before possibly installing a team that will run the platform once he chooses a new CEO. The billionaire quit the job mid-December but recently indicated he would stay on as boss until the end of the year.
"I think I need to stabilize the organization and just make sure it's in a financially healthy place and that the product roadmap is clearly laid out," Musk said during a remote video interview on Feb.15. "I'm guessing probably towards the end of this year should be a good timing to find someone else to run the company, because I think it should be in a stable condition around, you know the end of this year."
