Twitter fires more employees; Musk loyalist Esther Crawford not spared
Elon Musk has fired a bunch of Twitter employees again. Per the Information, at least another 50 staffers were affected this time. Laid-off employees include Twitter's product head and Musk loyalist Esther Crawford. The new wave of cuts is aimed at curbing costs at the company that has been struggling with generating revenue since Musk's takeover.
Why does this story matter?
Musk's reign at Twitter began with layoffs. Since then, there have been multiple rounds of axings at the company. Revenue has been the company's biggest problem. The microblogging platform has been going through a period of austerity to offset its losses. However, it seems neither Musk nor Twitter has figured out how to treat the company's issues.
Most of the remaining product team axed
Twitter's recent round of layoffs affected employees across product and engineering divisions. Some staffers discovered they were fired during the weekend, while the rest found out when they could not access the internal system. According to The Verge's Alex Heath, most of the company's remaining product team was fired. It is, however, unclear how many employees were fired in total.
Crawford was one of the faces of Twitter 2.0
Under Musk's stewardship, Crawford emerged as one of Twittter's most prominent product heads. She was one of the faces of Twitter 2.0. Therefore, the decision to fire her came as a surprise to many. Crawford was in charge of multiple products, including Twitter Blue and the upcoming payments platform. She notably shared a picture of her sleeping on the floor at Twitter's office.
Founders of acquired companies were among fired
Laid-off employees include start-up founders who joined Twitter via acquisitions. Martijn de Kuijper, the founder of the recently shut newsletter Revue, confirmed he was among those who were let go. "Waking up to find I've been locked out of my email," he tweeted. Haraldur Thorleifsson, the creator of the design studio Ueno, which Twitter acquired in 2021, was also axed.
Someone manually shut off access to Twitter's Slack
The new round of layoffs came at a time when employees were cut off from using Slack. As expected, Twitter hasn't paid its Slack bill, but that wasn't the reason why Slack went down. Someone manually shut off access to Slack. Many employees saw this as a sign of impending layoffs at the time. Seems that their guts were right.
