Esther Crawford claims Elon Musk's inability to handle criticism has created an "enthusiastic and fanatical" inner circle.
Twitter’s former product director, now at X, offers new insight into the inner workings of the social media company and some of the peculiarities that come with working under entrepreneur Elon Musk.
In a 2,400-word tweet and accompanying video, Crawford described the pre-Musk Twitter as a bureaucratic shackle that was "amazing and scary," and the new post-Musk Twitter as "difficult and dramatic."
“Twitter has grown at the speed of molasses and suffered from bureaucracy, but now X is run by an erratic leader whose instincts are driven by the unique and undoubtedly strange experience of being the biggest voice on the platform.”
Crawford was one of the few members of the original Twitter team who voluntarily stayed with the company after Musk took over — a decision she said was made in the hope that the billionaire could start steering the company in the right direction.
Notably, she was fired along with 200 other people in Musk’s February round of layoffs.
“I think he’s built incredible and lasting companies like Tesla and SpaceX, so maybe his private ownership can shake things up and breathe new life into the company,” she wrote.
Describing Musk as "bold and inspiring," she acknowledged that he was "exceptionally charming and genuinely funny," even if he tended to repeat the same stories and jokes over and over again.
Despite Musk's likeable qualities, his notorious leadership style soon became problematic, with Crawford saying he often lacked empathy to a "painful" degree.
Crawford added that Musk is extremely unpredictable and many Twitter employees are afraid to feed him bad news or opinions that contradict his own.
“Because it’s so hard to gauge his mood and how he might react to any given thing, people quickly become dreadful about being called into a meeting or having to share negative news with him.”
This inability to handle criticism ultimately led to the formation of a "fervent and enthusiastic" inner circle that provided unwavering support for everything Musk said, Crawford explained.
Ultimately, however, it was discovered that Musk was "clearly not afraid to screw up" and often sought advice on major decisions from people other than employees or trusted members of his inner circle.
"Instead, he would poll people on Twitter, ask friends, and even seek product suggestions from his biographer. At times, he seemed to trust random feedback more than the people in the room who had dedicated their lives to solving the problem at hand. I never understood why, and am still puzzled by it," she said.
Cointelegraph reached out to Twitter for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Since Musk took over the company in October 2022, he has introduced a slew of new cryptocurrency and finance-related features to the app.
As part of its recent name change to “X,” Musk intends to build the social media platform into an “everything app,” which will include electronic payments, voice calling and possibly some form of integration with meme token Dogecoin (DOGE).
