Twitter fires 2 top managers, announces hiring freeze ahead of Elon Musk takeover

Twitter confirmed that two of its top managers were leaving the company ahead of Tesla billionaire Elon Musk's takeover. 

One Twitter general manager, Kayvon Beykpour, is leaving after seven years. In a series of tweets, Beykpour said CEO Parag Agrawal "asked me to leave after letting me know that he wants to take the team in a different direction".

Bruce Falck, Twitter's revenue and product lead, was also fired, according to a tweet that has since been deleted.

Beykpour was the general manager of consumer Twitter, leading design, research, product, engineering and customer service and operations teams, according to his Twitter bio.

A co-founder of the live streaming app Periscope, Beykpour joined Twitter when the social media company bought his startup in 2015.

Twitter confirmed both departures and said the company is pausing most hiring and except for business critical roles.

In a memo sent to employees and confirmed by Twitter, Agrawal said Twitter has not hit growth and revenue milestones after the company began to invest "aggressively" to expand its user base and revenue.