Twitter employee seen sleeping on office floor as Elon Musk pushes tight deadlines

Steve Hopkins

‘This is not normal or sane in a work environment’

People are divided over a photo showing a Twitter employee sleeping on the office floor as a result of “working round the clock to make deadlines” a week after Elon Musk took over and started letting people go.

Hours into his takeover Musk fired top execs. He then dissolved the board making himself the sole director and announced plans to hike blue check subscription charges, giving Twitter engineers an ultimatum to make it happen. Kanye West also reemerged on the platform, having been suspended for making anti semitic remarks. And, according to Bloomberg News, Musk plans to cut 3,700 Twitter jobs, axing about half the workforce.

While most of people hate pulling a bit of overtime, especially on a Friday, not many of us have probably curled up in a sleeping bag beneath our desks. After all, we’re in the era of the four-day working week and WFH.

Given that, naturally, this picture of Twitter employee Esther Crawford taking 40 winks while Elon isn’t watching, went viral.

She’s Twitter director of product management.

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 original snap was shared by one of Crawford’s colleagues and shows her in a sleeping bag, eye mask secured, on the floor in-between some chairs and a desk.

“When you need something from your boss at Elon twitter,” the post read.

Crawford re-tweeted the image, and added: “When your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork.”

The image follows reports of staff being ordered to work ’84-hour weeks’ or risk losing their jobs.

People were divided over the picture.

It was either do this or be fired.
If you seriously consider that a "choice", then you need to seriously reevaluate your definition of the word, as well as reevaluate your life.

— ↦🎃 Spooky ℓιz 💀 ↤ (@LizReszke) November 3, 2022

This is an executive level leader likely bringing home a 7 figure salary. Not feeling sorry

— Andrew Kortlang (@kortlang413) November 2, 2022

Crawford went on to provide some context around the picture since “some people are losing their minds”.

“I’ll explain: doing hard things requires sacrifice (time, energy, etc).

“I have teammates around the world who are putting in the effort to bring something new to life so it’s important to me to show up for them & keep the team unblocked.”

Crawford said the pressure at Twitter at the moment was not a “normal” reflection of the working environment, rather a reflection of a massive business and cultural transition”.

She then went on to say how “lucky” she is her colleagues understand when she needs to “go into overdrive to grind and push in order to deliver” and how “proud” she is of the company’s “strength and resilience”.

Since some people are losing their minds I'll explain: doing hard things requires sacrifice (time, energy, etc). I have teammates around the world who are putting in the effort to bring something new to life so it's important to me to show up for them & keep the team unblocked.

— Esther Crawford ✨ (@esthercrawford) November 2, 2022

We are #OneTeam and we use the hashtag #LoveWhereYouWork to show it, which is why I retweeted with #SleepWhereYouWork — a cheeky nod to fellow Tweeps. We've been in the midst of a crazy public acquisition for months but we keep going & I'm so proud of our strength & resilience.

— Esther Crawford ✨ (@esthercrawford) November 2, 2022

Not everyone was buying it.

One user argued: “I can’t tell if this is a tongue-in-cheek joke, or actually serious. Either way this is not normal or sane in a work environment.”

“When you take pride in a glaring failure of management,” another echoed.

A third said: “Appreciate the effort, but let’s hope it’s a special situation and not gonna be a recurring thing. Working hard is fine but sleeping at work seems a bit much.”

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