Shakeups Continue at Twitter as Kayvon Beykpour, Bruce Falck Are Out

Elon Musk’s $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter has yet to close, but it continues to cause shockwaves at the social network, with the latest being the departures of general manager, consumer Kayvon Beykpour and revenue product lead Bruce Falck. A spokesperson for the company confirmed the departures and said vice president of product Jay Sullivan will become the new GM of Bluebird, Twitter’s consumer products division, and interim GM of Goldbird, its revenue products division. Twitter would not comment further on the changes but did confirm a hiring freeze, with the spokesperson saying, “Effective this week, we are pausing most hiring and backfills, except for business-critical roles. We are also pulling back on non-labor costs in order to ensure that we are being responsible and efficient.” Beykpour discussed his departure in a series of tweets, eschewing the conciliatory tone that usually accompanies announcements of this type and stressing that the decision to leave Twitter was not his own. https://twitter.com/kayvz/status/1524787800863744002 He tweeted, “The truth is that this isn’t how and when I imagined leaving Twitter, and this wasn’t my decision. (CEO Parag Agrawal) asked me to leave after letting me know that he wants to take the team in a different direction.” He went to note that the social network’s daily active users were up more than 87% since the second quarter of 2018 and touted “bold and exciting” new features including Communities, creator tools, safety controls, Spaces and Topics. Beykpour also congratulated Sullivan, thanked former CEO Dick Costolo for “taking the bet” on short video creation application Periscope—which Twitter acquired in 2015, when Beykpour was its co-founder and CEO—and thanked former CEO Jack Dorsey “for the opportunities and trust.” There was no further mention of Agrawal. Falck’s series of tweets was much more subdued, thanking the teams and partners he has worked with over the past five years and writing, “Everything this team has done and will do sits on the shoulders of the giants that did this work—those dedicated IC (instrumentation and control) engineers who seldom see the spotlight or get the recognition they deserve. The unsung heroes that make Goldbird (and Twitter) what it is.” https://twitter.com/boo/status/1524795027125198852 Thursday’s moves continued the host of changes made by Agrawal since taking over as CEO upon Dorsey’s departure last November, including: Just days after taking over, early last December, Agrawal implemented a major reorganization, which included the departures of engineering lead Michael Montano and design and research lead Dantley Davis, as well as shifting to a GM model for consumer, revenue and core technology, with those GMs leading all core teams across engineering, product management, design and research. Those GMs, respectively, were Beykpour, Falck and Nick Caldwell. Twitter revealed in January that head of security Peiter Zatko was no longer with the company and chief information security officer Rinki Sethi would leave in the coming weeks. And Thursday’s moves came amid swirling reports that Musk will take over as interim CEO when his deal to acquire the company is finalized.

Leadership & Talent

Shakeups Continue at Twitter as Kayvon Beykpour, Bruce Falck Are Out

The company also confirmed a hiring freeze

David Cohen

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David Cohen