In November 2022, when Elon Musk had just bought Twitter and wanted to scrap the existing blue-check system, Esther Crawford posted what she later described as a “cheeky” photo of herself sleeping inside Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, California.
“When your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork,” Crawford, the product management director at the time, wrote.
The photo went viral and became, for better and for worse, emblematic of the work culture — and chaos — that had taken over Twitter under its new boss.
“I love my family and I’m grateful they understand that there are times where I need to go into overdrive to grind and push in order to deliver. Building new things at Twitter’s scale is very hard to do. I’m lucky to be doing this work alongside some of the best people in tech,” Crawford wrote on Twitter after receiving backlash for the photo.
But behind the scenes, the Twitter director had shared concerns about her employees burning out under the pressure of Musk’s demands and tight deadlines.
Plus, the photo was staged.
Pushing the team to death
According to a story adapted from “Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter,” an upcoming book about Musk’s chaotic takeover of the company, written by New York Times reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, Crawford expressed concerns to Musk about how her team was being pushed to revamp Twitter Blue into a service that would dole out blue checks to any user who paid $8 a month. Previously, the checks were used to verify celebrities, government entities, and other notable users susceptible to impersonators. The old Twitter Blue also offered users more features, such as the ability to edit tweets.
Three sources familiar with Crawford’s conversations with Musk told the Times reporters that the Twitter director was given 10 days to relaunch Blue.
That pressure had apparently taken a toll on some team members.
According to the excerpt, some employees working on Blue began monitoring their spiked heart rates on their Apple Watches and sharing the stats with their coworkers as a lighthearted joke.
At one point, Crawford, who had to devise careful tactics for approaching Musk, told the new boss she didn’t want to push her team to death.
“I don’t want to push the team to die over this,” Crawford told Musk, according to the excerpt.
“Well, push them to just before they die,” Musk said, laughing.
Crawford and a spokesperson for X did not respond to a request for comment.
A loyal Musk employee
Crawford joined Twitter in 2020 and stayed from Musk’s takeover until she was fired.
It’s unclear why Crawford was let go despite being one of Musk’s most loyal employees. In February 2023, the director was among at least 50 team members who were laid off. The company was rebranded to X in July 2023.
The former director had said on social media that she embraced Musk’s hustle culture and that, before his entrance, “Twitter often felt like a place that kept squandering its own potential.” But she also said that Musk put himself in an “echo chamber” by surrounding himself with “yes men.”
According to the book, Crawford brought a sleeping bag and eye mask to the office for nap breaks. One of her colleagues had even captured a photo of her sleeping at work.
Crawford and her coworkers later decided to take another photo of her in her sleeping bag — this time, staged — after working a long shift with the team.
The tweet of the staged photo quickly spread on the internet, receiving praise and criticism.
According to the book, the colleague who snapped the photo wanted to take down the post, but Crawford insisted they leave it up.
“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,” Crawford wrote at the time. “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.”
In April, Crawford announced that she joined Meta and praised CEO Mark Zuckerberg for his “vision and intensity.” Crawford took on a similar role she had at Twitter, becoming Meta’s director of product management.
“Seeing how he’s made the company more efficient and less bureaucratic in the past year makes me even more bullish to be joining now because I want to move fast and ship awesome products,” Crawford said of Zuckerberg.
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