Recently, Twitter was forced to let go of Esther Crawford, their director of product management. Last year she became famous when a picture of her sleeping at the company’s San Francisco headquarters went viral on social media.
After Crawford was fired by the management team, she took to Twitter and remarked that her optimism or efforts were deemed ‘wrong.’ Coming from one of the leading executives responsible for introducing a subscription service to acquire notarization marks, Crawford’s plight is unfurling at its worst.
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. 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. 💙
— Esther Crawford ✨ (@esthercrawford) February 27, 2023
In 2022, Crawford skyrocketed to stardom after penning a viral social media post in which they expressed: “Many employees are forced to spend their nights at work just so that they can meet assignment deadlines.”
Caught in a peaceful slumber, Crawford was nestled between the table and chairs of an illuminated conference room. She had donned her sleeping cap to protect her eyes from the desk lights above.
When your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork https://t.co/UBGKYPilbD
— Esther Crawford ✨ (@esthercrawford) November 2, 2022
At the time, it was rumored that the employee feared for their job security and had been proactively sharing information about upcoming changes to social media.
Crawford expressed in his tweet that Musk is always looking for the right combination of adjustments to guarantee the long-term success and development of his businesses – even if some initiatives fail. After all, it’s essential to experiment with innovative approaches until you find what works best!
We are #OneTeam and we use the hashtag #LoveWhereYouWork to show it, which is why I retweeted with #SleepWhereYouWork — a cheeky nod to fellow Tweeps. We've been in the midst of a crazy public acquisition for months but we keep going & I'm so proud of our strength & resilience.
— Esther Crawford ✨ (@esthercrawford) November 2, 2022
On a late Saturday night, some of the fired employees including Crawford received an email relaying their termination from the company. However, other workers announced that they had discovered their employment ending after being unable to access the firm’s internal system.
Established in 2006, Twitter has become one of the most powerful social media presence. Its reach is immense: boasting over 100 million active users and more than 500 million tweets sent each day!
Waking up to find I’ve been locked out of my email. Looks like I’m let go. Now my Revue journey is really over 🫡
— Martijn (@mdekuijper) February 26, 2023
Shortly after his $44 billion buyout in early November, US tycoon Elon Musk made the shock decision to let go nearly half of the giant company’s employees–approximately 3,700 out of 7,500. Among those laid off are Alfonzo Funes Terrell and Davis Brown who were spearheading a social media platform dubbed “Spill” as an alternative to Twitter.
Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2022
Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required.
On February 18, Bloomberg reported that almost all of Twitter’s employees in India were let go last year- resulting in the closure of two out of three offices. This marked a major shift for the company as it reorganizes its operations across India.
Last month, the company decided to cut costs by reducing at least 12 job titles in their Dublin and Singapore offices.
In order to explain the necessity of dismissing and laying off employees, Musk tweeted that Twitter was losing more than four million dollars every day – leaving no other choice but reducing its employee count.
