No one can describe Elon Musk’s “extremely hard-core” Twitter 2.0 better than Esther Crawford, the director of product management who became internet famous for sleeping on her office floor.
Now Crawford, who survived multiple staff cullings on social media platforms, has been released. However, instead of feeling bitter, she defended her decision to forego family time to vote for the billionaire owner of Twitter.
“The worst thing that can happen when you see me entering Twitter 2.0 is that my optimism or hard work is wrong,” he wrote on Sunday in a post on Twitter that has been seen by 1.2 million people.
The worst thing you can do from watching me go all in on Twitter 2.0 is that my optimism or hard work is misplaced. The jeers & mockers are always on the sidelines and not in the arena. I am very proud of the team for building through so much noise & chaos. 💙
— Esther Crawford ✨ (@esthercrawford) February 27, 2023
A November picture of the mother of three curled up in a sleeping bag with an eye mask propped up next to her”mischievous“The hashtag #SleepWhereYouWork has sparked controversy because it is seen as glorifying a corporate culture that requires constant self-sacrifice when Twitter is about to lay off half its workforce.
When your team is pushing every hour to make a deadline sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork https://t.co/UBGKYPilbD
— Esther Crawford ✨ (@esthercrawford) November 2, 2022
The early weeks of Musk’s Twitter reboot saw Crawford’s co-workers repeatedly push the door open in ways that usually make headlines.
One of them was publicly fired via Twitter after daring to publicly correct Musk, while fired software engineer Nicholas Robinson-Wall even encouraged his colleagues to have “moral obligation” does not obey the new owner.
In the blowback over his choice to stay in office asked Crawford to open professing love for his family: “I’m thankful he knows there are times when I have to go into overdrive to grind and push to deliver.” (His wife called him a role model for their children).
However, the image comes as sensitivity about the state of the US labor force is heightened, with new efforts to regulate companies controlled by union scavengers like Musk and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz.
Twitter employees also began to question whether it is necessary to burn the midnight oil just to help Musk save the $ 44 billion investment that he fought until the end to avoid: “Are you going to sacrifice time with your children on vacation for guarantees and unclear opportunities. to make people get richer, or you will be taken out,” ex-Twitter employee Peter Clowes asked rhetorically at the time before bailing in the company.
Crawford addressed the critics
Throughout this tumultuous period, Crawford remained a staunch defender of interested visionaries, launching a scheme to charge users for previously free verification badges.
Controversial at the time, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has now taken on the idea himself.
Crawford’s endless support for Musk may be because he knows the pressure he faces as an entrepreneur, having himself founded and run a software startup called Squad, which he then sold to Twitter in December 2020.
In a profile of Crawford published last month, the Financial Times described him as a “rare leader” of the company’s old guard who can win Musk’s favor by challenging tactfully behind closed doors.
However, when it was his turn to fall on the sword, gladiator Musk called out his critics for being an armchair general.
He accused her of mocking him from the sidelines instead of being “in the arena” with him, a reference to a 1910 speech by Theodor Roosevelt that was popular in corporate America for praising the community. who does the work. (Nike loves it so much, it’s commercial).
Now the mantle of Musk’s most loyal supporter on Twitter appears to have passed to Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of Trust and Safety who was recently described by Bloomberg as “the chief executive of Musk’s personality”.
Irwin replied Crawford there, acknowledging the brief but important role he played in helping the new owner. “Thank you for your hard work to help lay the groundwork for Twitter 2.0, Esther,” she wrote. “You will be missed.”
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