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Esther Crawford: Twitter exec who went viral for sleeping in office overnight sacked in latest layoffs

Esther Crawford was relieved of her duties along with several other product leaders who were locked out of their company portals over the weekend

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA: Esther Crawford, the Twitter executive who went viral for sleeping on the floor at the company headquarters, has reportedly been fired. She was part of the social media firm's older team and managed to gain Elon Musk's trust after the billionaire imposed his "extremely hardcore” work culture.

Crawford, who led the Twitter Blue subscription service, was relieved of her duties over the weekend along with several other product leaders who learned they were let go after being locked out of their company portals over the weekend. Musk's critics appeared to rejoice at the news and mocked Crawford for getting the ax despite her loyalty to her new boss. She has since responded to the wave of criticism.

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'I’m deeply proud of the team'

“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,” Crawford shared in a tweet. “Those who jeer & mock are necessarily on the sidelines and not in the arena,” she continued, referencing a quote by Theodore Roosevelt. “I’m deeply proud of the team for building through so much noise & chaos," she added.

Crawford, who oversaw the Twitter Blue subscription service, was notably one of a select few of Musk's trusted lieutenants who were not brought in from one of his other companies — Tesla, SpaceX, and The Boring Co. However, she eventually became one of the dozens of engineers, product managers, data scientists, and team heads who were fired over the weekend.

Reports suggest at least 200 employees were laid off in the latest round of cuts. Senior product manager Martijn de Kuijper, who was based in Holland, admitted on Twitter that he too learned of his fate after being unable to log into his corporate portal. “Waking up to find I’ve been locked out of my email. Looks like I’m let go,” wrote de Kuijper, who founded the Revue newsletter platform that was later acquired by Twitter. “Now my Revue journey is really over," he added. Revue was reportedly shut down by the social media giant in January.

Massive drop in revenue

The latest round of layoffs at Twitter suggests Musk is having difficulty meeting his goal of breaking even, according to the New York Post. The billionaire has downsized his workforce a whopping eight times since taking the reigns last fall. The San Francisco-based microblogging site employed roughly 7,500 people before Musk bought the firm. The number has since been trimmed to around 2,000 -- a staggering 73% reduction. Twitter, which was acquired for $44 billion last year, must reportedly make a $1.2 billion annual interest payment per the terms of Musk's heavily leveraged buyout of the company. In November, the tech mogul said there was a “massive drop in revenue” on the platform as advertisers curbed spending due to content moderation concerns. Furthermore, Twitter recently started sharing revenue from advertisements with some of its content creators, per The New York Post.