Copyright Aaron Durand (@everydaydude) for Twitter, Inc.
On Sunday, news rippled through the internet (mostly Twitter) that at least four key executives were departing from their posts, with rumors circulating that heads of engineering, product, media and Vine have exited the company.
Hours later, after much speculation, Jack Dorsey posted that these individuals left the company on their own volition:
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
Those confirmed leaving the company are Katie Stanton, who headed up Twitter’s media department, Alex Roetter, who headed up the engineering division, Jason Toff, who led the Vine product and Kevin Weil, who headed up product. (Skip Schipper, VP of Human Resources, mentioned in Dorsey’s post, appears to be a fifth departing employee.)
All four executives have left for different reasons, but most chose to focus on family. Toff tweeted that he is leaving Twitter to work on VR at Google. Stanton wrote a post on Medium that confirmed that she wanted to focus on her family; she’s a mom of three. Roetter tweeted that he will be focused on his family, as well, and Weil announced the same. Schipper’s reasons for departure are unconfirmed at the present.
Both Roetter and Weil were instrumental in building up Twitter’s ad products, which Dorsey acknowledged brought the product from “producing near-zero revenue to the over-$2 billion run rate it is today.” Adam Bain, Twitter’s COO, will be pulled to the helm, assuming new responsibilities inclusive of Twitter’s ad product, filling the void created by Roetter’s and Weil’s departures. Other remaining executives will step in, with Adam Messinger, CTO, handling engineering and consumer product, design and research, user services and Fabric. Additionally, Twitter is said to be set to announce a new media personality who will be joining its board of directors today.
Update: Skip Schipper’s departure is confirmed, making five key executives having left Twitter on January 24.
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