Just three months after Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey returned to the company to take on the role of full-time CEO, its top brass has lost four key executives on Sunday night in a high-profile shakeup.
Engineering head Alex Roetter, global media chief Katie Stanton, human resources head Brian ‘Skip’ Schipper and product senior vice president Kevin Weil are leaving the company.
Was really hoping to talk to Twitter employees about this later this week, but want to set the record straight now: pic.twitter.com/PcpRyTzOlW
— jack (@jack) January 25, 2016
In a statement posted to Twitter, Dorsey wrote:
I’m sad to announce that Alex Roetter, Skip Schipper, Katie Stanton, and Kevin Weil have chosen to leave the company. Alex and Kevin, both here over five years, scaled the ads product and engineering teams from producing near-zero revenue to the over-$2 billion run rate it is today…
All four will be taking some well-deserved time off.
Dorsey added that COO Adam Bain wiil take on additional responsibilities, including overseeing the “revenue-related product teams, the media team, and the HR team on an interim basis.” CTO Adam Messinger will combine engineering, design, research, user services and Fabric into one group.
In addition, Jason Toff, who served as GM of Vine for two years, announced that he was leaving to join Google’s VR team.
Personal update! I'm joining Google to work on VR. So much exciting potential there.
— Jason Toff (@jasontoff) January 25, 2016
Twitter’s shares, which were at their lowest-ever price two weeks ago at $19.98, fell even further to $17.84 on Friday.
In a blog post on Medium, Katie Stanton confirmed that she chose to resign in order to spend more time with her family:
While I’ve poured my heart and soul into Twitter, I decided to resign because it’s time for me to pour more of my energy into my family.
Life moves fast and I want to enjoy the time with my children before it’s too late. There’s a weird stigma about taking a break to spend time with your family — but really, what could be more important?
It’ll be interesting to see if the restructured firm can win back shareholders’ trust under Dorsey’s leadership in the year to come.
Recode reports that Twitter is set to fill its CMO post by hiring American Express’ executive vice president of global advertising, marketing and digital partnerships Leslie Berland; nothing official has been announced as yet.
➤ Jack Dorsey [Twitter]
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