Zynga has its first exec shake-up under Mattrick's watch

Social game company Zynga has been shedding executives for a while now, as top employees leave one by one. This week, another handful dropped out as new CEO Don Mattrick looks to tighten the top ranks. Mattrick joined Zynga from Microsoft last month, and detailed a 90 day plan in which he planned to review all levels of the business. This plan is now in full force, and is already taking effect on the top tiers of the company, according to an internal note sent to employees by Mattrick, and as supplied to Gamasutra. Cadir Lee, Colleen McCreary, and David Ko, all executives at Zynga, will be leaving the company to pursue other interests. In their places, Zynga is now pushing its senior development leaders up and removing layers between the executive rank and the teams themselves. Leaders on development of series like FarmVille, as well as those in charge of the With Friends network, will be asked to pull their resource teams more tightly together, in the wake of the executive cutbacks. These leaders -- seven in total -- have formed a new executive team at the company, who will report directly to Mattrick. The CEO believes that this structure will allow Zynga to grow once again.