The Mercury News

Twitter’s heads of engineerin­g and design to leave

- By Kate Conger

Twitter’s new CEO, Parag Agrawal, said Friday that he would reorganize top leadership at the company and that two key executives would depart.

The shake-up was the first sign of change under Agrawal, who took the reins of the social media company Monday after its co-founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey, announced his resignatio­n.

Twitter has been under pressure from investors to more quickly launch new products and add to its revenue. Agrawal said in an email to employees that the leadership changes were designed to accelerate Twitter’s pace.

Twitter’s head of engineerin­g, Michael Montano, and its head of design and research, Dantley Davis, will leave the company by the end of the year. Davis had championed a culture change at

Twitter that pushed staff for higher performanc­e and that some employees criticized as bullying.

Twitter confirmed the executive departures in a regulatory filing Friday.

Davis played a key role in a behind-the-scenes effort over the past two years to remake Twitter’s culture. But he repeatedly clashed with employees because of his blunt style. His treatment of workers was the subject of several investigat­ions by

Twitter’s employee relations department and of complaints to Dorsey that too many people were leaving.

Davis and Montano will remain advisers to Twitter during the first quarter of 2022, according to the regulatory filing.

Dorsey, Davis and Montano are not the only executives who have recently announced plans to leave Twitter. The company’s head of people, Jennifer Christie, also recently announced that she would leave by the end of the year, according to two people familiar with the announceme­nt who were not authorized to speak publicly.

The product and engineerin­g teams within Twitter will be consolidat­ed under three executives, a Twitter spokespers­on said.

Kayvon Beykpour will manage all consumer products and will oversee the design and research organizati­on. Bruce Falck will take over all revenue products. And Nick Caldwell will manage the technical infrastruc­ture on which Twitter runs, overseeing data science and back-end engineerin­g.

Twitter announced in February that it aimed to double revenue and add 123 million more active users by 2023, and the company hopes that consolidat­ing Twitter’s teams under a handful of leaders will help it execute on its plans more quickly, a spokespers­on said.

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