Fired X Exec Who Went Viral for Sleeping at Office Joins Rival

UPDATE Apr 30, 2024 1:39 PM CDT

Twitter product head Esther Crawford went viral in late 2022, soon after Elon Musk took over the company, when she shared a photo of herself sleeping on her office floor as a sign of dedication—only to wind up fired. She's now bounced back into the social media landscape, signing up with rival Meta as a director of product for Messenger and getting in some possible digs at her former boss, per Mint. "Meta was my top choice because I am obsessed with how humans connect through technology—and no other company has a bigger scale of impact in that space than Meta," she wrote Monday on Instagram, adding that she's especially excited about Mark Zuckerberg's "vision and intensity."

Feb 27, 2023 11:08 AM CST

When Elon Musk acquired Twitter in October, it had nearly 8,000 employees. After another surprise wave of layoffs over the weekend, the number now stands at fewer than 2,000, reports the New York Times. Musk laid off about 200 employees Saturday night, or roughly 10% of the company's workforce. The unlucky workers received the news via email, per the Wall Street Journal. "Today is your last working day at the company," read one such notice. One name in particular is generating a lot of attention among the newly laid-off, that of Esther Crawford (the site Platformer first reported she was out).

Back in November, Crawford tweeted a photo of herself sleeping in her office to meet the demands of the new boss, notes the Verge. Crawford had been in charge of Musk's controversial plan to charge users for their blue verification marks, and she appeared to be "angling for a bigger role" under the new Musk regime, per this deep dive in the Verge from January. On Sunday, after being laid off, she tweeted: "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. Those who jeer & mock are necessarily on the sidelines and not in the arena. I'm deeply proud of the team for building through so much noise & chaos."

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It's possible Crawford may get the last laugh financially. The Times notes she was among several creators of smaller tech companies that had been scooped up by Twitter over the years. These founders tended to have lucrative deals that guaranteed stock and bonuses and made layoffs expensive. (More Meta stories.)