The head of engineering at Twitter has announced his departure from the social media giant a day following the plagued by glitches launch of Ron DeSantis’ US presidential campaign on the platform.
Foad Dabiri shared via Twitter, “After almost four incredible years at Twitter, I decided to leave the nest yesterday.”
Technical issues plagued the unveiling of Mr DeSantis’ candidacy for the presidency, with a Twitter livestream experiencing malfunctions.
Since its acquisition by Mr Musk, the company has seen more than 80% of its employees laid off.
As the engineering lead for Twitter’s Growth department, Mr Dabiri posted a tweet expressing he had “experienced two distinct eras” during his tenure at the company, pre and post-Musk acquisition.
In another post, Mr Dabiri described the evolution into Twitter’s “2.0” as “massive and rapid”.
He followed up with, “To say it was challenging at the outset would be an understatement.”
The reasons behind Mr Dabiri’s decision to exit Twitter remain unspecified, and it’s unclear whether it had any relation to the technical issues encountered during the DeSantis event.
The BBC received no immediate response from Mr Dabiri when asked for a comment. Similarly, Twitter did not issue a statement regarding Mr Dabiri’s departure when contacted by the BBC.
Nonetheless, Mr Dabiri commented, “Working with @elonmusk has been highly educational, and it was enlightening to see how his principles and vision are shaping the future of this company.”
A malfunctioning Twitter livestream caused a delay of 20 minutes to the launch event of Mr DeSantis’ campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
By the time the Twitter discussion on Wednesday evening got into full swing, hundreds of thousands of Twitter users had abandoned the platform.
The governor of Florida, Mr DeSantis, is perceived as the main competition to former President Donald Trump for their party’s nomination in the 2024 general election.
Twitter was purchased for $44bn (£35.4bn) in October by Mr Musk, who also heads car manufacturer Tesla and aerospace company SpaceX.
In a conversation with the BBC the previous month, he mentioned that the reduction of the workforce from just below 8,000 individuals when he purchased the company to approximately 1,500 was not an easy task.
Since taking over Twitter, Mr Musk has issued pink slips to thousands of workers, including those responsible for the website’s operations and technical problem-solving.
Mr DeSantis’ team swiftly put a positive spin on the technical glitches, proclaiming on Twitter that the announcement had shattered “the internet with so much excitement”, and sharing a link to the campaign’s website.
Bryan Griffin, his press secretary, announced that the digital event had brought in $1m within an hour.
At peak, the Twitter event attracted over 600,000 listeners according to Reuters, but by the event’s end, the number had dipped below 300,000.
Once the livestream commenced, Mr DeSantis shifted the discussion towards his conservative achievements and his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in his state – a response that earned him applause from numerous Republicans.
