Dantley Davis—Twitter’s ambitious, divisive design chief—is out

Twitter’s new CEO Parag Agrawal didn’t waste any time making his mark on the company. Just four days after Jack Dorsey announced his surprise departure over Twitter, his successor announced a reorganization that will have chief design officer Dantley Davis and head of engineering Michael Montano leaving by the end of the month.  The reorganization is consolidating Twitter into three new divisions—consumer, revenue, and core tech—which will be led by Kayvon Beykpour, Bruce Falck, and Nick Caldwell. According to a staff memo obtained by the Washington Post, the changes are an effort to promote “clear decision-making, increased accountability, and faster execution,” as Twitter pursues its goals.  Davis, who joined Twitter in 2019, was the first person to hold the title of chief design officer at the company, as well as the first Black executive to report to the CEO since Twitter went public. His tenure, as Fast Company senior writer Mark Wilson reported in a September feature, was marked by ambition and employee strife. Davis was hired away from Facebook to help shake up Twitter’s corporate culture and tackle some of the platform’s most deep-seated issues, including its spreading of hate speech, misinformation, and online abuse. (Davis says he told Dorsey at their first meeting that his interest in the job came down to whether or not the CEO believed that groups that condone hate and extremism belonged on the platform.)  Davis moved to address these issues: He pushed to get misinformation labels live. His group helped to deactivate algorithms that prioritized white faces when auto-cropping photos. And he set up a team to tackle problems like targeted harassment. At the same time, he was on the receiving end of racist attacks and death threats—sent via his own platform—which led Twitter to post security around his house.  Davis also overhauled Twitter’s design group, making it more responsible for product development. But a New York Times report in August detailed how his efforts to increase accountability among his team, and his blunt manner, led to some members reporting to HR feeling “psychologically unsafe.”  It’s unclear if design will once again hold a C-Suite role at Twitter, as it did under Davis.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90703239/twitter-design-chief-dantley-davis-out-in-reorg?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss

Creată 3y | 4 dec. 2021, 00:20:44


Autentifică-te pentru a adăuga comentarii

Alte posturi din acest grup

How the H1-B visa is causing strife within Trump’s coalition

An online spat between factions of Donald Trump’s suppo

27 dec. 2024, 22:10:03 | Fast company - tech
People who visit adult or gambling websites double their risk of malware

Visiting adult and gambling websites doubles the risk of inadvertently installing malware onto work devices, according to a new study.

27 dec. 2024, 12:40:06 | Fast company - tech
How to put down your phone in 2025

There are certain social media rules we can all agree on: Ghosting a conversation is impolite, and replying “k” to a text is the equivalent of a backhand slap (violent, wrong, and rude). But what

27 dec. 2024, 12:40:05 | Fast company - tech
AI is helping students with disabilities. Schools worry about the risks

For Makenzie Gilkison, spelling is such a struggle that a word like rhinoceros might come out as “rineanswsaurs” or sarcastic as “srkastik.”

The 14-year-old from

26 dec. 2024, 20:30:05 | Fast company - tech
Cyberattack hits Japan Airlines, delaying flights for holiday travelers

Japan Airlines said it was hit by a cyberattack Thursday, causing delays to

26 dec. 2024, 18:20:03 | Fast company - tech
An ex-OpenAI exec and futurist talks about AI in 2025 and beyond

Welcome to AI DecodedFast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week 

26 dec. 2024, 18:20:02 | Fast company - tech