by Eric Lendrum
Two top officials at Twitter were fired on Thursday, signaling ongoing internal chaos at the tech giant as Elon Musk prepares to take over the company.
According to ABC News, one of Twitter’s general managers, Kayvon Beykpour, was fired after working at Twitter for seven years. The same day, revenue and product lead Bruce Falck announced his firing in a tweet that has since been deleted. Beykpour described his situation in several tweets, claiming that CEO Parag Agrawal “asked me to leave after letting me know that he wants to take the team in a different direction.” Falck’s Twitter bio now simply reads “unemployed.”
Twitter released a statement acknowledging the firings, while also revealing that it is halting any further hires except for crucial business roles.
“We are pulling back on non-labor costs to ensure we are being responsible and efficient,” the statement read in part.
As general manager of consumer Twitter, Bekypour was in charge of design, research, product, engineering, customer service, and operations. He played a role in creating Periscope, the now-defunct livestreaming service once offered by Twitter, and had first joined the company in 2015.
“I hope and expect that Twitter’s best days are still ahead of it,” Bekypour said in another tweet. “Twitter is one of the most important, unique and impactful products in the world. With the right nurturing and stewardship, that impact will only grow.”
“I dedicate this Tweet to those engineers and thank you ALL for the opportunity to serve alongside you,” Falck tweeted. “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.”
The firings represent the first of what is likely to be many staff shakeups at the company as Musk prepares to close his purchase. The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and the richest man in the world, Musk has vowed to fire at least 1,000 employees from Twitter as part of his campaign to make the Big Tech platform friendlier to freedom of speech.
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Eric Lendrum reports for American Greatness.
Photo “Kayvon Beykpour” by Kayvon Beykpour. Background Photo “Bruce Falck” by Bruce Falck. Background Photo “Twitter Headquarters” by Troy Holden. CC BY-SA 3.0.
