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The account behind the headline is Esther Crawford’s personal description of working with Elon Musk at Twitter. As reported by Victor Tangermann in Futurism on July 28, 2023, Crawford described Musk’s demeanor as capable of shifting quickly from excitement to anger and said employees could be afraid to bring him negative news. Those are Crawford’s reported workplace observations—not an independently established account of every interaction or evidence of a clinical diagnosis.
What did Esther Crawford say about working with Musk?
Tangermann’s July 28, 2023, report in Futurism identifies Crawford as a former Twitter product manager and recounts a lengthy public post she published on the platform. In it, she reportedly criticized Musk’s response to feedback and the way decisions were handled.
Crawford wrote that Musk’s “demeanor can turn on a dime going from excited to angry.” The report also says she described employees as fearful of being called into meetings or of sharing bad news with him. These descriptions reflect her account of the workplace; they should not be read as independently verified findings about all staff or every meeting.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsWhat did she say about feedback and decision-making?
Crawford said Musk sometimes appeared to trust outside reactions more than people who had worked deeply on a problem. As quoted in Tangermann’s report, she wrote: “At times it seemed he trusted random feedback more than the people in the room who spent their lives dedicated to tackling the problem at hand,” adding, “I never figured out why and remain puzzled by it.”
Her criticism also concerned process and empathy. The report describes her as saying Musk was willing to “burn so much down” and as criticizing what she saw as an “echo chamber.” Those are Crawford’s judgments as reported by Futurism, rather than conclusions established by an independent investigation.
Was Crawford’s account entirely negative?
No. The report says Crawford called Musk “genuinely funny” and recognized his record with difficult, physics-based problems. Her concluding assessment was mixed: “I learned a ton from watching Elon up close — the good, the bad and the ugly,” she wrote. “His boldness, passion and storytelling is inspiring, but his lack of process and empathy is painful.”
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Does the account establish that Musk had a clinical condition?
No. Crawford’s reported description of rapid changes in demeanor is a personal workplace observation. The account does not establish a diagnosis or show that a clinical condition caused the behavior she described. The report also refers to separate descriptions attributed to a former Tesla executive and biographer Walter Isaacson; those references do not independently verify Crawford’s experience.
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How much of the original account is available?
Tangermann’s article reports excerpts from Crawford’s public post, but the full original post is not reproduced in the available reporting. The quotations above should therefore be understood in the context and attribution provided by Futurism, not as a complete record of Crawford’s original account.
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