Twitter CEO pushes out top execs, freezes hiring

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The top leadership of the company is being changed. The first move came when Kayvon Beykpour, the leader of consumer product, announced on his account that the current CEO asked him to leave.

Bruce Falck, the general manager of revenue and head of product for the business side, confirmed on his account that he was also fired.

Jay Sullivan, who we spoke to in March about the plans to add 100 million new users, will take over as head of product and interim head of revenue.

addendum: taking inspiration from my good friend @kayvz I'll clarify that I too was fired by @paraga

— bruce.falck() (@boo) May 12, 2022

According to the New York Times, the company is pausing most hiring and pulling back on spending, but is not currently planning layoffs. According to the text of the email, failures to hit audience and revenue goals are the reasons for the changes. 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.

Beykpour has led the development of many of its biggest features and design changes over the last several years. It's a surprising change, since he just reorganized his executive team a few months ago with the exit of the design and engineering leads of Twitter.

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.

— Kayvon Beykpour (@kayvz) May 12, 2022

Beykpour co-founded the company that was acquired by Periscope. Beykpour became the head of consumer product at the larger company in the year that followed, and oversaw an unusual period of feature launches in the years that followed. It was shut down last year.

I dedicate this Tweet to those engineers and thank you ALL for the opportunity to serve alongside you. It’s been awesome. There is a lot more to do so get back to work, I can’t wait to see what you build #TIF

— bruce.falck() (@boo) May 12, 2022

Bruce Falck thanked the engineers he'd worked with, and said "When all is said and done, it's the work that matters."

Falck's work is less visible to users than Beykpour's, but he has popped up in the news about changes to how it serves advertising. It is worth mentioning that the backyard of Falck was the location of a casual meeting between Beykpour and Mosseri that was part of the process of finally supporting image previews for its links on Twitter.

The Verge reached out to the micro-blogging site.

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