Musk axes 200 more staff in latest Twitter cull

Twitter has laid off about 10 per cent of its remaining workforce in the latest round of job cuts since Elon Musk took over last year.

Some 200 staff were axed over the weekend – including Musk devotee Esther Crawford who led the relaunch of the Twitter Blue subscription scheme.

The product manager was known for committing publicly to Musk’s hardcore office culture. A picture of her in the office in a sleeping bag and wearing a sleep mask was shared online last November.

Sacked: Twitter manager Esther Crawford, who was known for committing publicly to Musk’s hardcore office culture. has now lost her job 

As news of her sacking broke, she took to the platform to defend herself, writing: ‘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. I’m deeply proud of the team for building through so much noise and chaos.’

Musk bought Twitter in October for £38billion and fired about half the 7,500-strong workforce the following month. 

He called for those who remained to sign up to an ‘extremely hardcore’ working culture and further cuts have been made since. 

But the latest round of job cuts were the largest since then and hit 200 of the 2,000 employees who were left.

Those hit primarily were product managers, data scientists and engineers who worked on machine learning and site reliability for the business, according to The New York Times.

Twitter staff took to Blind, an anonymous online platform for verified workers, to detail the cuts as they unfolded.

‘People receive an email at 2am on Saturday and access cut immediately,’ one post read.

‘This will go down as one of the most extreme lay-offs in entire corporate history.’

The user claimed the sackings hit the project management department the hardest and were spread across HR, sales and marketing, engineering and finance.

Dedicated: Crawford posted a picture of herself sleeping in her office as she worked long hours to relaunch the Twitter Blue subscription scheme

Crawford was among several laid-off staff who had founded small tech companies that Twitter had previously bought.

She set up Squad, a screen-sharing and video chat app, which Twitter purchased in 2020 before she joined the social media giant.

In response to Crawford’s tweet following her sacking, Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, wrote: ‘Thank you for working so hard to help lay the foundation for Twitter 2.0 Esther. You will be missed.’

Musk, the chief executive of electric car maker Tesla, has been shrewd and direct about the financial turmoil Twitter faces.

The 51-year-old made it clear before his acquisition that cost-cutting would be the priority.

Employees were told in November they needed to sign a pledge to be able to stay on in their roles. 

They received an email that read: ‘If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below.’

The link led to an online form, in which Musk told his workers that if they did not sign by 5pm Eastern time two days later on Thursday, November 17, they would get three months of severance pay.

This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk