Esther Crawford: The fired Twitter exec defends her “all in” for Elon Musk
Perhaps no one embodied Elon Musk’s “extreme hardcore” Twitter 2.0 better than Esther Crawford, his head of product management, who rose to internet fame for sleeping on the office floor.
Now Crawford, who has survived multiple staff selections on the social media platform, has herself been fired. Instead of bitterness, however, she defended her decision to forego family time in order to grind it for the billionaire owner of Twitter.
“The worst thing you could make of seeing me go all in on Twitter 2.0 is that my optimism or hard work was a mistake,” she wrote on Sunday in a post on Twitter dated March 1, 2019 .2 million people was seen.
The worst thing you could make out of seeing me go all in on Twitter 2.0 is that my optimism or hard work was a mistake. Anyone who mocks and scoffs is inevitably on the sidelines and not in the arena. I am deeply proud of the team for building through so much noise and chaos. 💙
— Esther Crawford ✨ (@esthercrawford) February 27, 2023
The mother-of-three’s November snap, curled up in a sleeping bag and eye mask, posted alongside her, “cheekyThe hashtag #SleepWhereYouWork sparked controversy for allegedly glorifying a corporate culture that required constant self-sacrifice, just as Twitter was on the verge of laying off more than half of its workforce.
When your team pushes 24/7 to meet deadlines, sometimes you do #SleepWhereYouWork https://t.co/UBGKYPilbD
— Esther Crawford ✨ (@esthercrawford) November 2, 2022
In the first few weeks of Musk’s Twitter reboot, Crawford’s staff repeatedly pushed out the door in a headline-grabbing manner.
One was openly fired via Twitter after daring to publicly correct Musk, while fired software engineer Nicholas Robinson-Wall even advocated for colleagues to use a “moral duty‘ to disobey the new owner.
Backlash over her decision to spend nights in the office prompted Crawford to be frank profess their love for their family: “I’m grateful they understand that there are times when I have to go full blast to grind and push to deliver.” Her husband called her a Example for their children.
Nonetheless, the picture landed at a time when sensitivity to labor conditions is rising in the US, with renewed efforts to organize companies controlled by well-known union busters like Musk and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz.
Twitter contributors had also begun to question whether it’s worth burning the midnight oil just to help Musk salvage a $44 billion investment he fought to the end: “Would Do you sacrifice time with your kids over the holidays for vague reassurances and opportunity? to make a rich person even richer, or would you take that out?” Ex-Twitter contributor Peter Clowes asked rhetorically at the time before the takeover of the company.
Crawford aims at critics
Throughout this tumultuous period, Crawford remained a staunch defender of the capricious visionary and instituted his scheme to charge users for a previously free verification badge.
Although it was controversial at the time, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has now embraced the idea.
Crawford’s unwavering support for Musk may also stem from her own familiarity with the pressures he faces as an entrepreneur, having herself co-founded and led a software startup called Squad, which she sold to Twitter in December 2020.
In a profile published by Crawford last month, the financial times described her as a “rare leader” from the company’s old guard who was able to win Musk’s favor by tactfully challenging him behind closed doors.
However, when it was her turn to lunge for her sword, Musk’s Gladiator proclaimed the critics armchair generals.
She accused her of mocking from the sidelines rather than being “in the arena” with her, a reference to a 1910 speech by Theodore Roosevelt that was popular among American corporations to praise society perpetrators of deeds. (Nike liked it so much it became a commercial.)
Now the mantle of Musk’s most staunch supporter on Twitter seems to have passed to Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, who Bloomberg recently described as “the chief executive of Musk’s whims.”
irwin replied Crawford on Sunday, in recognition of the brief but important role she played in supporting the new owner. “Thanks for working so hard to lay the foundation for Twitter 2.0 Esther,” she wrote. “We will miss you.”
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