Twitter Cuts 10 Percent Of Staff, Including #SleepWhereYouWork Exec

Matthew Broersma,
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Latest round of cuts at Twitter affects 10 percent of staff, incuding executive pictured sleeping on floor last November

A Twitter executive pictured sleeping on the floor in an office conference room following the company’s takeover by Elon Musk has reportedly been let go amidst the firm’s latest round of cost-cutting layoffs.

The fresh layoffs affected about 200 people, or roughly 10 percent of the social media platform’s remaining staff, The New York Times reported, citing unnamed sources.

Musk said in January that Twitter had about 2,300 active employees, after he cut more than 3,700 jobs, or about half of its employee base, in the wake of the $41 billion (£34bn) takeover.

Some of those laid off received the news in an email late on Saturday while others tweeted they learned of their dismissal after finding they could no longer log into internal systems.
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#SleepWhereYouWork

One of those who lost their jobs was Esther Crawford, one of the executives in charge of subscription service Twitter Blue, who in November retweeted a picture of herself sleeping on the floor of the office.

“When your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork,” she wrote at the time.

She defended her actions at the time, saying in further posts that “doing hard things requires sacrifice” and that it was “important to me to show up for” her teammates.

In a Sunday string of posts Crawford again defended her actions, writing that she was “deeply proud” of her 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. Those who jeer and mock are necessarily on the sidelines and not in the arena,” she wrote.

Founder layoffs

Twitter had previously put off laying off the founders of startups acquired by the company in order to avoid having to expedite vesting of larger stock grants, according to Bloomberg, but several founders tweeted on Sunday that they too had been let go.

“Waking up to find I’ve been locked out of my email. Looks like I’m let go,” wrote Martijn de Kuijper, founder of newsletter startup Revue.

Musk at the end of January reportedly made a first substantial interest payment on the large debt he acquired to finance the acquisition.

Other cost-cutting measures have reportedly included ceasing rent payments at office spaces including the firm’s San Francisco headquarters.