A former Twitter executive who went “hardcore” for new boss Elon Musk by sleeping on the office floor only to be fired by the mogul a short time later is now working for his billionaire archrival Mark Zuckerberg.
Esther Crawford, who in 2022 posted photos of herself in a sleeping bag at the San Francisco headquarters of the company that Musk has since rebranded as X, took to Instagram to announce that she is now employed by Zuckerberg’s firm, Meta.
“Some personal news: I’ve joined the Messenger team at Meta as a Director of Product,” Crawford, who was Twitter’s director of product management for two years before she was laid off in February of last year, wrote on her Instagram account on Monday.
She wrote that Meta was her “top choice” because “I am obsessed with how humans connect through technology” and that Zuckerberg’s shop is unique in that “no other company has a bigger scale of impact in that space than Meta.”
Crawford praised her new boss, Zuckerberg, for his “vision and intensity.”
“Seeing how he’s made the company more efficient and less bureaucratic in the past year makes me even more bullish to be joining now because I want to move fast and ship awesome products,” Crawford wrote on Instagram, which is owned by Meta.
Crawford joined Twitter in December 2020 after it acquired Squad, her video chat startup.
When Musk acquired Twitter in late 2022 for $44 billion, Crawford was one of the holdover executives who bought into the mogul’s vision of round-the-clock work in the office.
In November 2022, she posted several photos of social media showing her in a sleeping bag that was laid out on the floor of her office.
“When your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork,” Crawford wrote in the tweet, which has since been deleted.
Musk rewarded Crawford by putting her in charge of the Twitter Blue subscription service.
But Musk eventually gave Crawford and other top engineers at the company the pink slip in an effort to bring down costs.
Since Musk took over the company formerly known as Twitter, some 80% of the workforce has been let go.
Several months after she was laid off, Crawford took to X and wrote that while Musk is “oddly charming and genuinely funny,” he could be difficult to deal with due since “his personality and demeanor can turn on a dime going from excited to angry.”
“Since it was hard to read what mood he might be in and what his reaction would be to any given thing, people quickly became afraid of being called into meetings or having to share negative news with him,” Crawford wrote.
She also wrote that Musk had an “inner circle” that was “too zealous and fanatical in their unwavering support of everything he said.”
Zuckerberg’s decision to hire Crawford is the latest wrinkle in his long-running rivalry with Musk, who has taken potshots at the fellow tech billionaire on numerous occasions.
Musk has been quoted as saying that Zuckerberg’s social media platforms “make people depressed.”
The Tesla boss began escalating his fight with Zuckerberg after reports emerged that Meta was working on an app to rival X.
That app eventually came to be known as Threads. While its initial rollout was a success, its usage dipped.
In February, however, data showed that Threads was getting more downloads on Apple-run iOS and Google Play than X.
Threads is reported to have more than 130 million monthly users while X says it has some 550 million users.
X threatened legal action against Meta alleging that the company hired former Twitter engineers and used the firm’s secrets to create a copycat app.
Meta has dismissed the claims.
Musk also challenged Zuckerberg to a mixed martial arts match, but the two men could never agree on a date and venue.
The Post has sought comment from X and Meta.
