Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal fired two execuites and freezed new hirings. The platform is living Game of Thrones in a real-life scenario, the consumer product head of the platform, Kayvon Beykpour spread the news with a tweet saying CEO Parag Agrawal “requested me to leave after informing me he wants to take the team in a different direction.”
Interrupting my paternity leave to share some final @twitter-related news: I’m leaving the company after over 7 years.
— Kayvon Beykpour (@kayvz) May 12, 2022
Twitter CEO fires Bruce Falck and Kayvon Beykpour
According to (now deleted) tweets from general manager of revenue and head of product for the company side, Bruce Falck, he was also terminated by Twitter CEO. On Thursday night, Parag Agrawal responded to both threads, expressing his gratitude for the men he’d dismissed and admiration for their efforts:
Thanks for everything you have done for Twitter – your impact will be felt for a long time, by many people. On a personal note, it has been so great to see how you have always led with your heart, with relentless focus, and a deep care for our teams.
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 13, 2022
Furthermore, the firm confirmed that it is implementing a hiring freeze, which is typical following M&A transactions:
“Effective this week, we are pausing most hiring and backfills, except for business-critical roles. We are also pulling back on non-labor costs to ensure we are being responsible and efficient,” the Twitter spokesperson said.
You’ve had such a huge impact. I have so much respect and admiration for what you have accomplished and am so glad I got to work closely with you all these years.
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 12, 2022
Both the head of product and interim head of revenue will be replaced by Jay Sullivan. These changes are all happening at the same time Elon Musk is finalizing his $44 billion buyout of Twitter, although he hasn’t yet acquired it.
The Verge revealed a memo sent to all employees by Twitter CEO Agrawal:
“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, who has served as GM of consumer for the company’s last couple of years, has been responsible for many of the firm’s greatest features and design modifications over the same period. It’s an odd move: Agrawal just redesigned his executive staff a few months ago with the departure of Twitter’s design and engineering leads, leaving Beykpour in command of consumer products.
Twitter spokesperson Adrian Zamora told to The Verge:
“We can confirm that Kayvon Beykpour and Bruce Falck are leaving Twitter. Jay Sullivan is the new GM of Bluebird and interim GM of Goldbird. Effective this week, we are pausing most hiring and backfills, except for business critical roles. We are pulling back on non-labor costs to ensure we are being responsible and efficient.”
Twitter acquired Periscope, the livestreaming startup Beykpour co-founded, in 2015, and since then has been hiring developers with a proven track record. Beykpour joined Twitter as its head of consumer product in 2018 after the company folded Periscope’s live broadcast capabilities into its main app. Last year, Periscope was finally shut down.
Everything this team has done and will do sits on the shoulders of the giants that did this work – those dedicated IC engineers who seldom see the spotlight or get the recognition they deserve. The unsung heroes that make Goldbird (and Twitter) what it is
— bruce.falck() 🦗 (@boo) May 12, 2022
In a series of tweets, Beykpour boasted about Twitter’s DAU increasing by more than 87% in the second quarter of 2018 and that his team has since launched a number of items. His team was behind the recent product innovation on Twitter, which gave rise to Communities, Topics, Creator Tools, Safety controls, and more. According to Beykpour, these goods began to ship at a rate faster than any time in the previous decade.
Mr. Falck wanted to express his gratitude to the engineers with whom he’d worked and stated:
“When all is said and done, it’s the work that matters: We upgraded our ad serving, prediction, analytics, attribution, billing, API, and many more systems, substantially improving our reliability and scalability.”
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
By the way, if you are wondering why did Elon Musk buy Twitter or will Elon Musk lift Trump Twitter ban, head in!
