Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced the departures of four senior executives late Sunday night. The latest exit marks the biggest leadership change since his return as it will put additional burdens on current employees.
Twitter loses important executives
Dorsey tweeted that the company will soon lose media head Katie Jacobs Stanton; product head Kevin Weil; head of the engineering division Alex Roetter; and HR head Brian “Skip” Schipper. Dorsey praised the executives and expressed his sadness over their departure.
On Sunday, Jason Toff, head of Twitter’s video streaming service Vine, tweeted that he is heading to Google soon to work on virtual reality. This marks another major loss for the media company. Toff was not mentioned in Dorsey’s tweet.
It is expected that on Monday, the company will announce other executive changes too, including the recruitment of a new chief marketing officer, says Reuters, citing a source familiar with the matter. The person also said that the company is close to announcing two new board members.
Additional responsibilities for Bain
Adam Bain, Twitter’s Chief Operating Officer, will take on additional responsibilities due to the recent departures, tweeted Dorsey. This would include revenue-related product teams and the HR team, while the responsibility of handling the engineering team will go to Chief Technical Officer Adam Messinger.
In recent months, Twitter has witnessed several high-level departures, including Weil, Stanton, Schipper and Roetter. During the company’s last earnings call in October, Dorsey talked about “hiring and investing in talent” and “the need for bold rethinking.” Dorsey has yet to laid out a detailed plan of what he plans do in coming times. Citing the source, Reuters said that Dorsey plans a retreat with Twitter executives this week.
Twitter is going through hard times, Not only it is losing key employees, but at the same time, the company’s stock has fallen below IPO levels, declining by about 50% since Dorsey’s return last year. The micro-blogging firm has been struggling to raise user growth, and the even quicker pace of product roll-outs could not save the company’s stock from declining.
On Friday, Twitter shares closed up 0.08% at $17.84. Year to date, the stock is down by almost 23%, while in the last year, it is down by almost 55%.
