I worked there at the time and ending up running the software infrastructure teams that fixed all these problems. The beer wasn't a reward, it was because people were stressed and morale was low. Nobody brought the site down on purpose.

What really made me mad was when we hired consultants and the contract would end, usually without much success because Twitter's problems were not normal problems, and then they would send us a fancy gift basket with our own wasted money.

Maciej, we are still waiting for you to ship the executive dashboard.