From The Floor To The Door: Elon Musk Reportedly Fires Twitter's 'Sleeping Bag Lady' In Another Round Of Layoffs

Elon Musk reportedly laid off at least 200 more Twitter employees on Saturday, including the lady who slept on the floor when her team was “pushing round the clock to make deadlines.” 

What Happened: Since acquiring Twitter in October 2022 for $44 billion, Musk has steadily slashed a significant number of employees from about 7,500 as he sought to reduce costs. 

The recent layoff spree cut back at least 200 employees, or 10% of the 2,000 still working for the microblogging site, reported the New York Times, citing three people familiar with the matter. 

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Among those affected were several founders of small tech companies that Twitter acquired over the years. This includes Esther Crawford, director of product management at Twitter, also known as the founder of Squad, a screen sharing and video chat app. 

Crawford also oversaw Musk’s ambitious plans for Twitter Blue, including monetizing the coveted blue checkmark. She gained overnight popularity in November last year as the lady who slept on the floor.  

Look, you're gonna feel pretty silly about this once you get canned with 0 severance.

— cliff@leaninto.it on mastodon (@moonpolysoft) November 2, 2022

Late on Sunday, Crawford responded to reports of her getting fired, saying: “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.”

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. 💙

— Esther Crawford ✨ (@esthercrawford) February 27, 2023

Why It’s Important: Twitter sacked almost 50% of the company’s workforce globally in 2022. Musk defended the decision by saying, “there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day.” 

Soon after, when Musk gave employees an ultimatum about Twitter 2.0, hundreds of people chose to exit the company instead of agreeing to work “long hours at high intensity.” 

This and smaller layoffs and resignations further reduced the staff count to around 2000, the report noted.  

During an internal Twitter meeting in late November, Musk told employees there were no more plans for staff reductions — which was true until now. 

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