Twitter Engineering Boss Left Company Day of DeSantis Fiasco

A top Twitter executive left the company the day of Florida Gov. Ron Desantis’ problem-plagued campaign announcement on the platform — but said his departure was "independent of any recent events."

"After almost four incredible years at Twitter, I decided to leave the nest yesterday," the now former director of engineering Foad Dabiri said in a tweet Thursday.

He praised his time and his co-workers at Twitter in what he called his "pseudo-obligatory gratitude thread."

But he also noted that characterizing Twitter's recent history as "challenging ... would be an understatement." Dabiri, however, noted that working with new owner Elon Musk was "highly educational" and "enlightening."

Dabiri's departure triggered speculation that others may leave after DeSantis' disastrous campaign launch on Twitter Spaces when hundreds of thousands of people tuning in heard mostly silence for some 21 minutes.

“That was insane, sorry,” Musk said during the event.

It's not clear what — if any — role Dabiri played in the campaign launch. 

Tech site Platformer News speculated that DeSantis' glitchy launch on Twitter Spaces was linked to Musk’s drastic layoffs. He slashed more than 75% of the workforce after he took over.

Twitter Spaces used to have some 100 employees, and currently has just three, according to Platformer.

Platformer noted that Twitter Spaces relies on the company's own servers and servers rented from Amazon Web Services, which were reportedly inadequate to handle the DeSantis traffic, and "led to a predictable series of cascading failures."

In addition, the small Twitter team failed to perform a stress test ahead of the launch, which may have revealed some flaws to address, the New York Times reported, citing two unnamed Twitter employees.

The technical problems "showed how Twitter is operating far from seamlessly, turning what was supposed to be a crowning event for Mr. Musk into something of an embarrassment," the Times noted.

Musk himself recently admitted that he might have fired too many people.

"We needed to do it fast, and unfortunately if you do it fast there are going to be some babies thrown out with the bathwater," he told CNBC earlier this month, referring to the firings. 

"Not all" the people who lost their jobs were "superfluous," Musk said.