SCIENCE & TECH: Two Twitter execs ousted as Elon Musk takeover looms

Twitter has ousted two top executives — with both of them tweeting they were fired on Thursday — as the social media giant edges closer to being acquired by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Kayvon Beykpour, the company’s general manager, and Bruce Falck, Twitter’s head of revenue, announced on Thursday that they were let go by CEO Parag Agrawal.

Jay Sullivan, the head of consumer product, will take over Beykpour’s position.

Beykpour tweeted on Thursday that “this wasn’t my decision” and that Agrawal “asked me to leave after letting me know that he wants to take the team in a different direction.”

Falck also tweeted that he was “fired” by Agrawal. That tweet was later deleted.

Agrawal circulated a memo to Twitter employees on Thursday announcing the departures.

In the memo, which was first reported by the New York Times, Agrawal also announced that the company would freeze new hires and that discretionary spending would be pulled back.

There are currently no plans to lay off staffers, according to the memo.

Agrawal noted in the memo that the changes were made due to Twitter’s failure to hit audience and revenue growth goals.

Twitter has been thrown into turmoil since the company’s board of directors announced last month that it had accepted Musk’s $44 billion buyout offer.

Musk has said he intends to buy out shareholders and take the company private. He also plans to institute changes to its content moderation policy.

Twitter has taken steps in recent weeks to boost sagging morale at the company as employees are dreading Musk assuming the helm.

Last week, Sullivan convened a meeting of staffers and urged them to stay motivated despite the specter of significant changes on the horizon.

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“Why show up and build stuff for an app that’s about to be in the hands of a new owner … who has said he plans to make serious changes?” Bloomberg reported, summing up staffers’ gripes.

“Why keep earning stock options at a company that’s about to go private?”

Musk has vowed to revamp the company’s content moderation policies that have resulted in bans of controversial figures, many of them on the political right. Twitter is fearful that employees could resign en masse ahead of Musk’s takeover, according to a regulatory filing that was submitted this week.

“Sullivan told employees that they have a responsibility to each other, and to a product used by hundreds of millions of people, which hosts the world’s most urgent and important public conversations,” Bloomberg reported.

“They’re all in this together,” he added, according to the people, who asked not to be named sharing internal discussions.