AOL sees three more major talent departures

For some reason, tech/media company AOL usually experiences talent departures in waves. Today for instance, people in three major positions announced that the were leaving the company for one reason or another.

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The first is AOL’s Chief Technology Officer Alex Gounares, who formerly worked as VP of Advertising R&D and CTO for Microsoft. Gounares, who was hired by AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong, had been with the company for nearly two years, but wanted to move back to Seattle, according to AllThingsD.

The second person out the door is Huffington Post Media Group head engineer Tim Dierks, AllThingsD later reported. Dierks’ departure is a bit more curious as he had only been with the company since September. Before that he was working as an engineer for Google.

Finally, AOL-owned TechCrunch has announced a major shift in its editorial structure. Erick Schonfeld has left his position as executive editor of the site. He’ll be replaced by TechCrunch staff writer (and VentureBeat alum) Eric Eldon. A large group of TechCrunch employees have already departed the news site since AOL took over. It began with the termination of site founder and editor Michael Arrington, and went on to many long-time staffers, such as Senior Editor Sarah Lacy (who now runs PandoDaily), Paul Carr, Greg Kumparak, Jason Kincaid, Robin Wauters, former publisher Heather Harde, and advertising director Vaughn Brown.

If you combine that with the talent losses AOL experienced from employees who defected to Vox Media (not to mention former AOL senior exec Brad Garlinghouse in November), it certainly adds up. And with major investors already breathing down the necks of AOL’s executive team, this new round of departures won’t help matters much. (But hey, at least the company stopped bleeding revenue last quarter.)