More layoffs on Twitter, and loyalist Esther Crawford is not spared

Twitter has laid off at least 50 other employees, according to a report by The Information and social media posts by former workers.

And apparently even Elon Musk loyalist Esther Crawford, the managing director of Twitter payments who oversaw the company’s Twitter Blue verification subscription, was not spared, according to Zoë Schiffer from the platform. Alex Heath of The Verge too confirmed that Crawford and most of the remaining product team were laid off over the weekend, leading many to speculate that Musk is cleaning the house to redecorate it with a new diet.

The layoffs came over the weekend after Twitter employees realized they had been cut off from using Slack. Although it later emerged that Twitter hadn’t paid its Slack bill on time, that’s not why the platform went down. The Platformer reported that someone on Twitter had manually closed access. Many employees feared this was the first sign of layoffs to come, and while correlation does not equal causation, an entire company cut off from its primary mode of communication as layoffs began to fall like bombs has sown confusion and panic.

“The slack is gone so no one knows what’s going on,” read a post on Blind, an anonymous platform for verified workers. “People are getting emails at 2 a.m. on Saturdays and going straight to the cut. This will go down as one of the most extreme layoffs in company history”

The post went on to detail the extent of the layoffs: 50% in human relations, 60% in sales and marketing, 35% in engineering, 40% in finance and 80% in project management. The employees received a one-month severance package, the poster reads. Twitter did not respond to requests for comment, nor did it issue a public statement on the layoffs.

The Information report also notes that Twitter kicked off this round of layoffs by laying off its ad sales staff on Feb. 17.

A senior product manager, Martijn de Kuijper, tweeted that he discovered his own lack of employment after his email account was blocked.

“I wake up to find that I’ve been locked out of my email. Looks like I’ve been let loose. Now my journey in the Revue is truly over,” tweeted by Kuijper. The leader founded Revue, an editorial newsletter tool acquired by Twitter in 2021.

Since Musk took over Twitter in October last year, the company’s workforce has fallen by more than 70%. This latest round of layoffs comes after Musk promised in November that there would be no more layoffs. But Musk has a reputation for making promises he can’t keep, whether it’s swearing that Tesla will solve self-driving “next year” every year since 2014 or reassuring investors about the fact that he has finished selling Tesla stock, to sell $3.5 billion more in Tesla Stock.

Musk did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment, made via Musk’s equivalent of a Hail Mary – via a tweet.