Twitter CEO Elon Musk slammed Democratic San Francisco Mayor London Breed on Tuesday after the city announced that it was investigating reports that Musk had turned some of the offices at the company’s headquarters into bedrooms to accommodate his plans for an “extremely hardcore” Twitter workforce.
“San Francisco building inspectors are launching an investigation into reports Twitter has converted several office rooms at its headquarters into sleeping quarters for employees,” tweeted KQED Supervising Senior Editor Ted Goldberg. “‘We need to make sure the building is being used as intended’ [SF Department of Building Inspection] rep tells @KQEDnews.”
Musk responded, “So city of SF attacks companies providing beds for tired employees instead of making sure kids are safe from fentanyl. Where are your priorities @LondonBreed!?”
Musk’s response to Breed included a link to a news article from the San Francisco Chronicle about a 10-month-old baby who reportedly overdosed on fentanyl after being exposed to the drug at a public playground.
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The city launched an investigation after Forbes reported that employees at the tech giant had “modest bedrooms featuring unmade mattresses, drab curtains and giant conference-room telepresence monitors.”
Another room had a plant, the article said, while another room had bright orange carpet “a wooden bedside table and what appears to be a queen bed, replete with a table lamp and two office armchairs just begging for convivial workplace collaboration.”
The slightly modified rooms were an upgrade from a photo that gained attention in November that showed one employee sleeping in a sleeping bag behind an office table.
“When your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork,” said employee Esther Crawford. “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.”
When your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork https://t.co/UBGKYPilbD
— Esther Crawford ✨ (@esthercrawford) November 2, 2022
“I work with amazingly talented & ambitious people here at Twitter and this is not a normal moment in time. We are less than 1wk into a massive business & cultural transition. People are giving it their all across all functions: product, design, eng, legal, finance, marketing, etc,” she continued. “I love my family and I’m grateful they understand that there are times where I need to go into overdrive to grind and push in order to deliver. Building new things at Twitter’s scale is very hard to do. I’m lucky to be doing this work alongside some of the best people in tech.”
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