Over the weekend, Platformer’s Zoë Schiffer took to his Twitter account to announce that Twitter’s product manager Esther Crawford had been laid off alongside approximately 50 employees. Crawford wore several hats at Twitter, among them the head of the Twitter Blue Subscription as well as the company’s payment platform.
Just got confirmation that Esther Crawford, chief executive of Twitter Payments, is out.
— Zoë Schiffer (@ZoeSchiffer) February 26, 2023
The Verge’s Alex Heath further indicated that aside from Crawford, the remaining product team was also cut loose. Ex-employees believe that this could be Elon’s bid to erect a new regime.
Lots of speculation among ex employees that Musk must be about to install a whole new regime and that’s why he is cleaning house. Otherwise the cuts don’t make sense. “Hard to keep the lights on with the people who are still left,” one ex manager told me.
— Alex Heath (@alexeheath) February 26, 2023
Crawford stood out as one of the most promising product managers under Elon Musk’s leadership. She even tweeted a photo of herself working round the clock at the office in a sleeping bag and eye mask with the aim of beating deadlines.
When your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork https://t.co/UBGKYPilbD
— Esther Crawford ✨ (@esthercrawford) November 2, 2022
The layoffs mainly affected employees that were part of the engineering team, that is, those in charge of supporting the Twitter app. advertising technology, and the technical team that ensure the platform’s systems are running smoothly. The founder of the defunct Revue newsletter platform acquired by Twitter back in 2021, Martijn de Kuijper has also been affected by these layoffs.
In a previous interview, Elon stated that he intends to step down as CEO towards the end of the year and find someone else suitable to run things. But before this, his intentions are to ensure that Twitter is stable and in a “financially healthy place” and that the product roadmap is clearly laid out.
It will be interesting to see how Elon manages to pull this off, especially since Twitter subscriptions are at 290,000. Elon’s plan is to have subscriptions represent 50% of the platform’s total revenue, and as it stands, subscriptions are well below the mark.
via: The Information
