Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey will face 2017 with a revamped leadership organisation as he makes another attempt to revive the flagging internet company, following Tuesday’s news of the latest high-level departure.
Adam Messinger, chief technology officer, announced he was leaving after three years in the company’s top engineering job. The news came a month after Adam Bain, chief operating officer and the person credited with building up Twitter’s advertising and marketing operations, also said he was leaving.
The two had been the longest-serving members of the senior executive group that Mr Dorsey inherited when he became the company’s chief executive in October 2015. His efforts since then to inject new dynamism into its product development and revive user growth have foundered, resulting in a failed search for a potential acquirer for the company this autumn and a round of job cuts.
Mr Messinger’s five years at the company make him a veteran by Twitter standards. His arrival from IT heavyweight Oracle came at a time when Twitter was struggling to handle rapid user growth, and the “Fail Whale” shown to users when they couldn’t access the site became the most visible sign of its growing pains.
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Mr Dorsey sought to paint the latest reshuffle as a sign that Twitter was stripping out a layer of management in an effort to move faster in revamping its service. In a statement in which he did not refer to Mr Messinger’s departure, he said that in future he would personally be working “even closer with our engineering and design teams to ensure we continue to be the fastest and best service to show what’s happening in the world”.
The company added that Mr Dorsey would now have direct control over the company’s product, engineering and design functions. Mr Bain’s duties have been taken on by Anthony Noto, the former Goldman Sachs banker who was hired as chief financial officer in 2014. Twitter has yet to name a new finance chief.
In another sign of the turnover in Twitter’s engineering and product development ranks, Josh McFarland, a vice-president of product at the company, said on Tuesday that he was leaving to become a partner at venture capital firm Greylock.
Date: December 21, 2016