With billionaire Elon Musk slated to take over the management of Twitter, even before his buyout deal is executed, top executives at Twitter — who their former CEO Jack Dorsey had said were mostly leftist — are leaving the company. General manager of consumer product Kayvon Beykpour and general manager of revenue Bruce Falck have announced their departure from Twitter.
Beykpour tweeted the announcement of his departure after 7 years of being at the company. He said that Parag Agrawal had asked him to leave since the CEO wanted to take the team in a different direction. “The truth is that this isn’t how and when I imagined leaving Twitter, and this wasn’t my decision. Parag asked me to leave after letting me know that he wants to take the team in a different direction,” Beykpour said in a tweet. He thanked co-founder Dorsey for his support.
Falck, who was with Twitter for 5 years, announced his departure through a tweet too. “I wanted to take a moment to thank all the teams and partners I’ve been lucky enough to work with during the past 5 years. Building and running these businesses is a team sport,” his tweet read.
Jay Sullivan will take over as both the head of product and interim head of revenue. “It’s critical to have the right leaders at the right time. Jay Sullivan, currently interim GM of Bluebird, has shown this powerfully. His product vision and ability to inspire move quickly and drive change is what Twitter needs now and in the future. I have therefore decided to make Jay the permanent GM of Bluebird,” Twitter CEO said in an email to employees.
The Twitter CEO announced Falck and Beykpour were leaving the company in an official email. In the same email, Agrawal also said he was pausing most of the hiring and was pulling back on spending. “Effective this week, we are pausing most hiring and backfills, except for business-critical roles as determined by Staff members in partnership with their HRBPs. We will also be reviewing all extended offers to determine criticality and those that should be pulled back,” he noted.
Though he clarified that there are no plans for layoffs, leaders can be removed. “We are not planning company-wide layoffs, but leaders will continue making changes to their organizations to improve efficiencies as needed. As always, performance management will continue to be a priority at this time at all levels to ensure we have the strongest teams possible,” Agrawal noted in the email.
Agrawal noted failures to hit audience and revenue goals as reasons for the departure of these top executives. In the email the Twitter CEO wrote (as reported by the publication), “at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, the decision was made to invest aggressively to deliver big growth in audience and revenue, and as a company, we did not hit intermediate milestones that enable confidence in these goals.”
There are rumours that the Tesla CEO, once he becomes Twitter boss, will fire Agrawal and become interim CEO. Responding to a Twitter user, Agrawal recently said that he was not worried about losing his job but more concerned about the company’s future.
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