Elon Musk fired Twitter's head of sales after she refused to sack more employees. He had previously begged her not to resign.

• Elon Musk sacked Twitter exec Robin Wheeler after she refused to fire more staff, sources said.
• Wheeler was sacked despite Musk persuading her to stay after she tried to resign, per Bloomberg.

Elon Musk fired a top Twitter executive after she refused to sack more employees in the ad sales team, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke to Insider.

Robin Wheeler, Twitter's global head of advertising sales, handed in her resignation on Thursday 10, but Musk persuaded her to stay in the job, the sources told Insider's Lara O'Reilly, and as Bloomberg earlier reported.

One week later, the billionaire changed his mind. Two sources said Wheeler was fired on Friday after she refused to cut the headcount of Twitter's ad sales team — a department that was already depleted.

Wheeler, whose Twitter bio now says "proud Ex-Twitter Sales Exec," tweeted on Friday in the past tense, saying: "To the team and my clients….you were always my first and only priority." She concluded the tweet with a salute emoji, a sign that has recently become symbolic for Twitter employees leaving the company amid layoffs and firings.

Platformer's Casey Newton reported that some Twitter staff in the sales team found out over the weekend and on Monday that they had been sacked after they couldn't access Twitter's systems.

This came after Musk sent an email to employees about his expectations for building "Twitter 2.0." If staff didn't sign up for "the new Twitter" by Thursday 5 p.m., they would receive three months of severance, Musk wrote in the email.

Twitter and Wheeler didn't immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment made outside of normal US operating hours on Tuesday.

Wheeler joined Twitter in 2012 as a senior director of sales, which involved managing relationships with some of the company's biggest clients such as Coca-Cola, Google, and Microsoft, according to her LinkedIn page. She became the head of ad sales in April this year.

Chris Riedy, Twitter's former vice president of the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region, replaced Wheeler at the weekend, per multiple Insider sources.