CEOs who cant' sit still: Jack Dorsey's Twitter departure is a sign

 Jack Dorsey, who is stepping down after six years as Twitter's chief executive, is one of the tech leaders who seem to have grown tired of managing their empires

In 2015, when Jack Dorsey rejoined Twitter as its interim chief executive, he raved about the app with quasi-religious fervor, calling it “the closest thing we have to a global consciousness.”

But on Monday, Mr. Dorsey left the pulpit. He resigned, saying in an email to Twitter employees that he believed the company should “stand on its own, free of its founder’s influence or direction.” He announced that Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s chief technology officer, would take over as C. E. O., while Bret Taylor would become its board chair.

In some ways, Mr. Dorsey’s departure is far from surprising. He has faced pressure for more than a year from the activist investor Elliot Management to boost Twitter’s growth and improve its financial performance. He’s also been running Square, the fast-growing financial services company he co-founded, and it always seemed that at some point he would decide that one C. E. O. job was enough. (In his email, Mr. Dorsey said that leaving Twitter was his choice.)

But there’s something else going on with Mr. Dorsey and some of his fellow tech moguls. They seem to be getting bored and restless with their jobs, and they’re striking out in search of adventure.

Jeff Bezos’ wanderlust led him to step down from Amazon this year and fulfill his childhood fantasy of going to space. Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, stepped down in 2019 and have since been investing in futuristic projects like airships and flying taxis. Mark Zuckerberg is still running Facebook, but it’s called Meta now, and the company’s big metaverse pivot seems to be designed in part to infuse some novelty and excitement back into a staid, big-company culture.

As Recode’s Peter Kafka wrote this year, this year’s big wave of tech executive departures partly reflects the fact that the biggest Silicon Valley giants are so huge and profitable that they no longer need visionary founders in charge — just competent managers who can keep the money-printing machines running and avoid any catastrophic mistakes.