Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, has officially taken over as the new CEO of Twitter. As per media sources, Musk terminated some of Twitter’s senior executives, which include CEO Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Ned Segal, and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde, just moments after closing the $44 billion deal.
He has previously accused the CEO of deceiving him and Twitter investors about the total count of phony accounts on the social networking site. Following the resignation of Jack Dorsey, Agrawal was appointed as Twitter’s CEO in November 2021. Dorsey had completely supported Agrawal at the time. Given that Musk sacked him, Agrawal’s tenure at the company was only under a year.
Agrawal attended the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Bombay. He also holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University and has worked as an intern for Microsoft, Yahoo, and AT&T Labs. He began working at Twitter in 2011. Thus he has been employed there for approximately 11 years.
He was formerly Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO), a position he has held since 2018. He was involved in the company’s technical development, particularly in machine learning and AI. The 38-year-old was among the youngest executives to lead a major technological corporation.
Why did Elon Musk sack the Former CEO?
Elon Musk and Parag Agrawal had a terrific start, but their friendship deteriorated rapidly as the deal negotiations advanced. According to the BBC, a sequence of messages produced in Delaware court disclosed that the two were polite and delighted to start working together, bonding over ‘engineering’ and their love of the microblogging platform.
I’m excited to share that we’re appointing @elonmusk to our board! Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our Board.
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) April 5, 2022
Looking forward to working with Parag & Twitter board to make significant improvements to Twitter in coming months!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 5, 2022
The partnership began to fall apart as the months passed, and Musk began to conduct his thorough research on Twitter’s spam/bot profiles and aired them openly on Twitter. In addition to the fact, it was a tweet from Musk that irritated Agrawal. Twitter’s dispute with Elon Musk is not unexpected.
Chief Twit, the billionaire, has been at odds with the recently ousted top management of Twitter since announcing his plan to take it over. Concerns over the number of bots on Twitter, as well as the company’s failure to disclose ‘critical’ information, all made the news when Musk chose to back out of the transaction.
Agarwal attempted to disregard the outpouring of criticism by tweeting near the end of April, “I took this job to improve Twitter for the better, course correct when necessary, and strengthen the service.” Proud of our people who continue to do the work with focus and urgency despite the noise.”
Most of these “top” accounts tweet rarely and post very little content.
Is Twitter dying? https://t.co/lj9rRXfDHE
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 9, 2022
However, it was evident that Musk did not agree with the way the company was governed. Musk altered his attitude in May when he began raising concerns about the user account on Twitter, claiming that a high percentage of users were phony and that the firm had not been forthcoming about its internet users.
Let’s talk about spam. And let’s do so with the benefit of data, facts, and context…
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022
The hard challenge is that many accounts which look fake superficially – are actually real people. And some of the spam accounts which are actually the most dangerous – and cause the most harm to our users – can look totally legitimate on the surface.
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022
Our actual internal estimates for the last four quarters were all well under 5% – based on the methodology outlined above. The error margins on our estimates give us confidence in our public statements each quarter.
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022
This compelled Agrawal to write a lengthy thread in May 2022 in response to the claim of phoney users. “We suspend over 500,000 spam accounts per day, generally before any of you even see them on Twitter,” he stated at the time. “We also lock millions of accounts each week that we suspect are spam if they cannot pass human verification tasks (captchas, phone verification, and so on).”
While Musk reportedly denied firing 75% of Twitter’s workers, the purported termination of the company’s senior executives has stunned many. Twitter agreed to the billionaire’s offer to acquire the microblogging site and take it privately earlier this year.
However, as soon as the terms of the arrangement became public, Musk expressed skepticism about finalizing it, claiming that Twitter had failed to report the quantity of spam and fraudulent users on the site. So, when Musk opted to revoke the Twitter acquisition agreement, the company decided to sue Musk, claiming that he refused to honor his commitments.
As the court struggle unfolded, Musk reversed his position and pitched acquiring Twitter for the original amount if the company abandoned its lawsuit. As of today, Musk is the new Twitter CEO and the company’s majority shareholder. Although none of the individuals involved have disclosed the reasons for Agrawal’s and other top executives’ dismissal, many experts predicted something would happen to them after the tumultuous takeover ended.
It isn’t all terrible news for Agrawal. According to Equilar, which was originally disclosed by Reuters, he is authorized to pay $42 million as compensation in company pay. Note that Twitter has never confirmed this estimate.
The figure includes a year’s pay for Agrawal as well as the expedited payout of all equity awards. When Musk announced the deal, Agrawal allegedly told employees on Monday that the social media company’s future is doubtful. Musk plans on taking Twitter private.
