Twitter Lays Off Manager Who Slept on Office Floor After Musk Takeover

Twitter has completed yet another round of layoffs following billionaire Elon Musk’s takeover of the site last year, and this time even some dedicated loyalists to the new regime have been axed. 

Musk’s takeover kicked off with a purge of the site’s top leadership, followed by installing or elevating people who would be loyal to his whims, such as new head of trust and safety Ella Irwin. Loaded with debt after the $44 billion sale, and with advertising revenues dropping, Twitter went from over 7,000 employees to under 2,000, with the remaining crew being told by Musk to be “extremely hardcore” and put in “long hours at high intensity.” Bedrooms were installed at the office, which Musk reportedly stayed in. 

One Twitter manager who took this new edict to heart was Esther Crawford, a product executive in charge of rolling out the Twitter Blue paid verification scheme. Crawford went viral last year when she retweeted a photo of herself sleeping on Twitter’s office floor in a sleeping bag. “When your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork,” Crawford wrote in a caption. 

Now, Crawford won’t be sleeping where she works—at least not at Twitter. Crawford was laid off over the weekend, Platformer’s Zöe Schiffer first reported.

When your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork https://t.co/UBGKYPilbD

— Esther Crawford ✨ (@esthercrawford) November 2, 2022

The cuts have reportedly affected at least 200 employees, accounting for about 10 percent of the remaining workforce. The cuts largely affected managers, including several founders of apps that were acquired by Twitter, a group that includes Crawford. 

“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 tweeted on Sunday night. “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.” 

“Thank you for working so hard to help lay the foundation for Twitter 2.0 Esther. You will be missed,” Irwin replied. 

Crawford did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The mass layoffs are yet another chaotic incident in Musk’s tenure so far, which can be characterized as an unending stream of chaotic incidents. There will surely be more to come.