New Twitter CEO kicks off ‘major reorganization’
On taking over the reins from Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s incoming CEO, Parag Agrawal, has announced a significant corporate reshuffle, saying several high-level executives would be leaving the company at or before the end of the year.
Three senior execs – head of engineering Michael Montano, chief design officer Dantley Davis, and chief HR officer Jennifer Christie – will step down sometime before 2022, the Washington Post reported on Friday, citing company sources and an email to employees from Agrawal. The reshuffle was motivated, in part, by the new CEO’s desire for “operational excellence,” the outlet added.
The changes will largely affect Twitter’s tech, revenue, and consumer divisions, with Nick Caldwell, Bruce Falck, and Kayvon Beykpour set to take over each department respectively.
As design lead, Davis reportedly created some friction in the workplace, with the New York Times describing a “tough love” approach that didn’t always go over well with co-workers. A spokesperson for Twitter told TechCrunch his departure was driven by a desire to shift the firm’s model to “a structure that has one lead manager supporting a key company objective.”
Dorsey, a Twitter co-founder, announced his resignation somewhat abruptly on Monday, before passing the chief executive baton to Agrawal, who had served as the company’s chief technical officer since 2017. He noted that he would remain on the board of directors until “May-ish” to help the new CEO settle into the role, and argued that, in order to grow, the platform should not be permanently bound to its original creators.
Agrawal, like Dorsey before him, has already garnered a significant crowd of detractors, amid concerns he will push Twitter in a more censorious direction. Elon Musk, who had been among the outgoing CEO’s most high-profile critics, even shared a meme comparing his successor to Stalin, riffing on rumors that Dorsey might have been under pressure to resign. Meanwhile, American conservatives dug up some of Agrawal’s old tweets, blasting them as racist and anti-religion.
READ MORE: Twitter announces more censorship for sake of ‘public interest’
