Ex-Twitter executive disagrees with many of Elon Musk’s decisions. Here’s why

As reported by AFP, Crawford stated that Musk runs the company based on instinct rather than data, and he is surrounded by sycophants.

Following the viral picture of her sleeping in a Twitter office last year, Esther Crawford highlighted that Elon Musk’s mood is erratic, which creates a difficult and unpredictable work atmosphere. Her remarks came as she discussed her experiences at the company, now renamed X, in a recent statement.

“I disagree with many of his decisions and am surprised by his willingness to burn so much down, but with enough money and time, something new and innovative may emerge,” Crawford said in the post.

Esther Crawford became a part of Twitter when her startup was acquired by the company in 2020. This was before Elon Musk purchased the social media platform for $44 billion.

“In person, Elon is oddly charming and he’s genuinely funny,” Crawford said.

“The challenge is his personality and demeanor can turn on a dime going from excited to angry.”

As reported by AFP, “Twitter employees feared being called into meetings with him or having to deliver negative news”, according to Crawford.

“At times it felt like the inner circle was too zealous and fanatical in their unwavering support of everything he said,” Crawford wrote, adding, “Product and business decisions were nearly always the result of him following his gut instinct, and he didn’t seem compelled to seek out or rely on a lot of data or expertise to inform it.”

Musk seemed to trust random feedback and Twitter polls more than employees working to solve problems at the company, according to Crawford.

“His boldness, passion and storytelling is inspiring, but his lack of process and empathy is painful.”

Musk has proven success tackling engineering problems, but a social networking platform requires emotional intelligence, Crawford said.

She did not spare the previous management, calling it “bloated” and “soft and entitled” where “teams could spend months building a feature and then some last-minute kerfuffle meant it’d get killed for being too risky.”

This week, Elon Musk made a significant change to Twitter’s branding by replacing the iconic blue bird logo with a white X.

After acquiring Twitter, Musk had expressed his vision of developing a super-app, drawing inspiration from China’s WeChat. The idea was to create a platform that combines social media, messaging, and payment functionalities.

Since taking ownership of Twitter in October of the previous year, the platform’s advertising business has experienced a sharp decline. This was attributed to dissatisfaction among marketers regarding Musk’s management approach and the extensive employee layoffs, particularly in the content moderation department.

As a response to the declining advertising business, Elon Musk has shifted his focus towards creating a subscriber base and implementing a pay model to explore new revenue streams.

However, this change in strategy has not been well-received by many users and advertisers. They have expressed dissatisfaction with the introduction of charges for services that were previously free, alterations to content moderation policies, and the reinstatement of right-wing accounts that were previously banned, AFP further noted.

Updated: 28 Jul 2023, 08:11 AM IST