Elon Musk posted a feel-good inspirational tweet wishing his followers a “good Sunday” just a day after some 200 Twitter employees learned that they had lost their jobs.
“Hope you have a good Sunday,” the Twitter owner tweeted. “First day of the rest of your life.”
Musk’s tweet coincided with the news that 10% of the remaining workforce at Twitter has been cut — including Esther Crawford, the loyal executive who bought into her new boss’ “extremely hardcore” work ethos.
Crawford was famously photographed sleeping on the floor of her corporate office during the early days of Musk’s stewardship of the San Francisco-based company.
She managed to earn Musk’s trust — a rarity for a Twitter manager who was a holdover from the old regime.
Crawford, who was put in charge of the Twitter Blue subscription service, was one of dozens of engineers and team managers to learn that they were fired after attempts to log into their corporate computer systems failed, according to the tech-centered news site The Information.
A source with knowledge of the situation told The Information that Saturday’s layoffs were timed so that Twitter will avoid payouts to those who wish to cash out unvested equity in company shares at their original $54.20 sales price.
Despite being ridiculed as “sycophantic” by Twitter users who thought her loyalty to Musk was for naught, Crawford was defiant and unapologetic about “going all-in” for her now-former boss.
“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 tweeted.
“Those who jeer & mock are necessarily on the sidelines and not in the arena,” she said, referencing a famous quote by Theodore Roosevelt.
“I’m deeply proud of the team for building through so much noise & chaos.”
Martijn de Kuijper, a senior product manager based in Holland, tweeted that he, too, learned of his dismissal when he failed to log into his corporate computer system.
“Waking up to find I’ve been locked out of my email. Looks like I’m let go,” de Kuijper, who founded the Revue newsletter platform which was later bought by Twitter, tweeted.
Since completing his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter last fall, Musk has slashed the company’s 7,000-plus-strong workforce by an eye-popping 70%.
As of Monday, there were roughly 2,000 employees remaining at the company.
Twitter has been in dire financial straits as ad revenues have plummeted in the weeks and months since Musk took over the company.
Earlier this month, Musk said his layoffs and restructuring of the company “saved it from bankruptcy.”
“Twitter still has challenges, but is now trending to breakeven if we keep at it. Public support is much appreciated!” Musk tweeted to his 130 million followers. He said that the three months during which he had owned the company were “extremely tough.”
Musk added that Twitter is still “definitely not financially healthy yet” but was “trending to be so” in the future.
With Post wires
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
