Twitter has fired two of its top executives within the social network and effectively put a halt on hiring any new staff. The news comes after Kayvon Beykpour, Consumer Product Leader, and Bruce Falck, General Manager of Revenue and Head of Product, both tweeted that they had been dismissed.
Beykpour, in particular, tweeted that Parag Agrawal, the current CEO of Twitter, had asked him to leave his position and the company, after it was made clear that Agrawal wanted to “take the team in a different direction”. In hindsight, Beykpour’s dismissal was quite abrupt; the man was on paternity leave when Aragwal decided to bring down the hammer on him.
I’m proud that we changed the perception around Twitter’s pace of innovation, and proud that we shifted the culture internally to make bigger bets, move faster, and eliminate sacred cows.
— Kayvon Beykpour (@kayvz) May 12, 2022
“I’m proud that we changed the perception around Twitter’s pace of innovation, and proud that we shifted the culture internally to make bigger bets, move faster, and eliminate sacred cows,” one of Beykpour’s tweets said.
In Falck’s case, his tweet was almost as dramatic, but stated that he was happy with what he had achieved in the five years he was at Twitter, along with the substantial improvements made across the board.
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
— bruce falck (@boo) May 12, 2022
As mentioned at the start of this article, Twitter has also put a pause on its hiring process, as well as turned down several applications, save for one in business-critical roles. It is speculated that this is due to the social media platform wanting to bring down their already burgeoning cost, as well as to prepare for the worst, now that Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, managed to purchase it for an eye-watering US$44 billion (~RM193 billion).
It goes without saying that Beykpour and Falck are the most recent casualties of the company; prior to this, Twitter also saw several other high-ranking members exit the company. For that matter, Agrawal himself could potentially lose his position as CEO at Twitter once the deal is finalised, as Musk would then sit in as the interim CEO, before finally installing a new permanent CEO for the social network.
(Source: The Verge, TechCrunch, Twitter [1] [2])
