Elon Musk is ’non-emphatic, genuinely funny,’ ex-Twitter employee spills details about Tesla CEO’s personality

Fired Twitter product manager Esther Crawford, whose picture sleeping in a Twitter office late last year made her a viral sensation, shared her thoughts about Elon Musk, about the social media giant in a lengthy post at X. Crawford sold her startup to Twitter in 2020. She said that working for Twitter was both "amazing and terrible".

Before Elon Musk's take over, Crawford said Twitter often felt ‘siloed’ and ‘bureaucratic’. “Dumb power plays, reorgs, and team name changes for the sake of someone’s ego were distractions that occurred too regularly,” she added.

CONSERVATIVE CULTURE

Calling Twitter's infrastructure 'old and bespoke', Crawford said there was little will to think beyond quarterly earnings calls. Healthy debate and criticism were replaced by a default refrain of “no, that can’t be done” or “another team owns that so don’t touch it”, she added.

Crawford said that Twitter often felt like a place that kept squandering its own potential.

ELON MUSK's TAKEOVER

Crawford said, "In person Elon is oddly charming and he’s genuinely funny. He also has personality quirks like telling the same stories and jokes over and over. The challenge is 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 stated that hat product and business decisions were nearly always the result of Musk following his gut instinct. She said that Musk 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 are 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.

"Twitter moved at the speed of molasses and suffered from bureaucracy but now X is run by a mercurial leader whose instinct is driven by the unique and undoubtedly weird experience of being the biggest voice on the platform," Crawford wrote.

Musk killed off the Twitter logo this week, replacing the world-recognized blue bird with a white X.