2 Twitter Executives Leave Company Ahead of Elon Musk’s Takeover

Founder and CEO of Tesla Motors Elon Musk speaks during a media tour of the Tesla Gigafactory, which will produce batteries for the electric carmaker, in Sparks, Nevada, on July 26, 2016. James Glover II/Reuters

Twitter confirmed it’s pausing most hiring as two executives have left the company ahead of Elon Musk’s announced takeover.

“We can confirm that Kayvon Beykpour and Bruce Falck are leaving Twitter. Jay Sullivan is the new GM of Bluebird and interim GM of Goldbird. Effective this week, we are pausing most hiring and backfills, except for business-critical roles. We are pulling back on non-labor costs to ensure we are being responsible and efficient,” Twitter spokesperson Adrian Zamora told The Verge in confirming the changes.

In a series of Twitter posts on May 12, Beykpour wrote it wasn’t his decision to leave the firm, adding that he is currently on paternity leave.

CEO Parag Agrawal “asked me to leave after letting me know that he wants to take the team in a different direction,” he wrote. ”The truth is that this isn’t how and when I imagined leaving Twitter, and this wasn’t my decision.”

Falck, meanwhile, wrote on Twitter on May 12 to confirm he’s leaving the firm and thanked the teams he worked with at Twitter. However, he didn’t directly address the circumstances around him leaving but added that he was fired by Agrawal.

“I dedicate this Tweet to those engineers and thank you ALL for the opportunity to serve alongside you. 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,” he wrote in a thread.

The announcement comes more than a week after Musk and Twitter jointly announced he would take over the company after he purchased a significant number of the social media firm’s shares. Musk, who describes himself as a proponent of free speech, said he wants to implement a number of changes to the company’s content moderation policies, reduce spam, and get rid of bots.

The deal, which is said to be worth $44 billion, hasn’t yet been completed.

Earlier this week, Musk told a conference that he would reinstate former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account, although the former president has said he won’t return and instead will focus on his Truth Social venture. Hours later, former Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey said he favors Musk’s recommendations surrounding Trump, who was possibly the most influential user when he used the platform.

“So I guess the answer is ... I would reverse the perma-ban” on Trump’s account, Musk said, while cautioning that he “[doesn’t] own Twitter yet.”

“Permanent bans should be extremely rare and really reserved for accounts that are bots, or scam, spam accounts,” he said. “I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump. I think that was a mistake. ... It alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice.”