Elon Musk Fires Employee Who Slept in Office to Prove Loyalty

That's gotta sting.

Tech Bros Ain't Loyal

It takes a lot to gain Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk's loyalty — in fact, even sleeping at the office in a show of fealty and dedication to the cause no longer seems to be enough.

In November, shortly after Musk took over the social media platform, former head of Twitter payments Esther Crawford appeared in a photo on social media, claiming that she chose to "sleep where you work" to meet Musk's deadlines.

But the sacrifice appears to be for nothing. Musk fired Crawford last week, as part of yet another round of layoffs at the company — after Musk promised late last year that there would be no more layoffs.

As for Crawford, she's still defending her dedication to Musk.

"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," she wrote on Twitter after the sacking. "Those who jeer and mock are necessarily on the sidelines and not in the arena."

In Too Sleep

As The Verge reported in January, Crawford was tasked with relaunching the social media platform's controversial $8-a-month Twitter Blue subscription after two other product leaders were ousted.

According to the report, she was "angling for a bigger role" following Musk's takeover.

Over the last couple of months, Crawford painted herself as an undying Musk loyalist by ironically claiming that "drastic cuts were going to be required to survive, no matter who owned the company," on the company's Slack, as quoted by The Verge, shortly after the November layoffs.

As to why Crawford was fired this month, it's always tough to read the tea leaves of Musk's leadership. But there's a good chance that he's looking for a completely clean slate as he tries to turn Twitter into a payments platform — and an extension of his own vanity.

Musk has long made a great show out of his dedication to his businesses, even sleeping on a couch at Tesla's factory in Fremont, California back in 2018.

The billionaire took this unhealthy work ethic and seemingly applied it to Twitter as well, building out conference rooms into "sad hotel rooms" for overworked employees.

But taking this kind of unhealthy work-life relationship to heart and dedicating yourself to the cause by sleeping at the office yourself didn't quite work out for Crawford — the sad outcome of a blinding devotion to a businessman who has historically shown little to no remorse for his workers.

READ MORE: Twitter Blue head Esther Crawford is out at Twitter [The Verge]

More on Twitter: Busted! Fame-Obsessed Elon Musk Ordered Twitter to Make His Tweets Show Up Everywhere