- Former Twitter director Esther Crawford went viral for a photograph of her sleeping at Twitter’s workplace.
- But behind the scenes, Crawford warned Elon Musk about burning out workers, a brand new guide reported.
In November 2022, when Elon Musk had simply purchased Twitter and wished to scrap the present blue-check system, Esther Crawford posted what she later described as a “cheeky” photograph of herself sleeping inside Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, California.
“When your staff is pushing around the clock to make deadlines generally you #SleepWhereYouWork,” Crawford, the product administration director on the time, wrote.
The photograph went viral and have become, for higher and for worse, emblematic of the work tradition — and chaos — that had taken over Twitter underneath its new boss.
“I like my household and I’m grateful they perceive that there are occasions the place I would like to enter overdrive to grind and push as a way to ship. Building new issues at Twitter’s scale could be very exhausting to do. I’m fortunate to be doing this work alongside a number of the greatest folks in tech,” Crawford wrote on Twitter after receiving backlash for the photograph.
But behind the scenes, the Twitter director had shared issues about her workers burning out underneath the stress of Musk’s calls for and tight deadlines.
Plus, the photograph was staged.
Pushing the staff to dying
According to a narrative tailored from “Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter,” an upcoming guide about Musk’s chaotic takeover of the corporate, written by New York Times reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, Crawford expressed issues to Musk about how her staff was being pushed to revamp Twitter Blue right into a service that will dole out blue checks to any consumer who paid $8 a month. Previously, the checks have been used to confirm celebrities, authorities entities, and different notable customers vulnerable to impersonators. The previous Twitter Blue additionally supplied customers extra options, corresponding to the flexibility to edit tweets.
Three sources aware of Crawford’s conversations with Musk advised the Times reporters that the Twitter director was given 10 days to relaunch Blue.
That stress had apparently taken a toll on some staff members.
According to the excerpt, some workers engaged on Blue started monitoring their spiked coronary heart charges on their Apple Watches and sharing the stats with their coworkers as a lighthearted joke.
At one level, Crawford, who needed to devise cautious ways for approaching Musk, advised the brand new boss she did not need to push her staff to dying.
“I do not need to push the staff to die over this,” Crawford advised Musk, in keeping with the excerpt.
“Well, push them to only earlier than they die,” Musk mentioned, laughing.
Crawford and a spokesperson for X didn’t reply to a request for remark.
A loyal Musk worker
Crawford joined Twitter in 2020 and stayed from Musk’s takeover till she was fired.
It’s unclear why Crawford was let go regardless of being one in every of Musk’s most loyal workers. In February 2023, the director was amongst not less than 50 staff members who have been laid off. The firm was rebranded to X in July 2023.
The former director had mentioned on social media that she embraced Musk’s hustle tradition and that, earlier than his entrance, “Twitter usually felt like a spot that stored squandering its personal potential.” But she additionally mentioned that Musk put himself in an “echo chamber” by surrounding himself with “sure males.”
According to the guide, Crawford introduced a sleeping bag and eye masks to the workplace for nap breaks. One of her colleagues had even captured a photograph of her sleeping at work.
Crawford and her coworkers later determined to take one other photograph of her in her sleeping bag — this time, staged — after working an extended shift with the staff.
The tweet of the staged photograph shortly unfold on the web, receiving reward and criticism.
According to the guide, the colleague who snapped the photograph wished to take down the submit, however Crawford insisted they go away it up.
“We are #OneSquad and we use the hashtag #LoveWhereYouWork to point out it, which is why I retweeted with #SleepWhereYouWork — a cheeky nod to fellow Tweeps,” Crawford wrote on the time. “We’ve been within the midst of a loopy public acquisition for months however we hold going & I’m so pleased with our power & resilience.”
In April, Crawford introduced that she joined Meta and praised CEO Mark Zuckerberg for his “imaginative and prescient and depth.” Crawford took on an identical position she had at Twitter, turning into Meta’s director of product administration.
“Seeing how he is made the corporate extra environment friendly and fewer bureaucratic prior to now 12 months makes me much more bullish to be becoming a member of now as a result of I need to transfer quick and ship superior merchandise,” Crawford mentioned of Zuckerberg.
