Elon Musk fires Twitter CEO Parag Agarwal: A have a look at CEO’s brief time period tenure

Agarwal was appointed in November 2021

India-born Agarwal was appointed because the CEO of Twitter in November 2021 after Jack Dorsey stepped down. At that point, Dorsey had totally supported Agarwal. Considering that Musk has fired him, Agarwal’s tenure was lower than a yr.

Agarwal is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. He additionally holds a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University and has interned with firms resembling Microsoft, Yahoo and AT&T Labs, amongst others. He first joined Twitter in 2011, so he has labored right here for nearly 11 years. Previously, he was the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Twitter and was appointed to the function in 2018. As beforehand reported, he performed a job within the firm’s know-how technique, notably round machine studying and AI. He additionally led efforts to boost the Twitter promoting system.

After paying billions for the social community, Elon Musk now owns Twitter. (Image credit score: Reuters)

Agarwal vs Elon Musk

While Musk has fired Agarwal, the connection hasn’t all the time been off to a rocky begin, a minimum of publicly. In April, when Musk purchased a majority stake in Twitter, Agarwal welcomed him. In truth, that’s nonetheless the tweet pinned to his profile. “I am excited to share that we are appointing @elonmusk to our board! Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it has become clear to us that he will bring great value to our board ,” the now sacked Twitter CEO wrote again in April this yr.

I’m excited to share that we’re hiring @Elon Musk to our board! Through conversations with Elon in latest weeks, it grew to become clear to us that he would deliver nice significance to our Board.

— Parag Agarwal (@paraga) April 5, 2022

Musk additionally tweeted, “Looking forward to working with Parag and the Twitter Board to make significant improvements to Twitter in the coming months!” But Musk declined to affix the board after Musk was there and took it as a take-it-or-leave-it acquisition supply.

Aggarwal tried to disregard all chats and tweeted in late April, “I took this job to make Twitter higher, in the correct course, and to strengthen the service. Proud of our individuals who proceed to work with consideration and promptness regardless of the noise. ,

But it was clear that Musk didn’t approve of the best way issues have been being run on Twitter. In May, Musk modified his tune and started elevating points concerning the consumer account on Twitter, alleging that numerous customers have been pretend, and that the corporate had not been sincere about its consumer base.

20% of pretend/spam accounts, whereas 4 instances what Twitter claims, might be *a lot* increased.

My proposal was based mostly on the accuracy of Twitter’s SEC filings.

Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO declined to publicly present proof of <5%.

The deal cannot transfer ahead till he does.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) 17 May 2022

This compelled Agarwal to situation a prolonged thread in May 2022, countering the declare of pretend customers. He wrote on the time, “We suspend over half a million spam accounts every day, usually any of you see them on Twitter. If we don’t pass the human verification challenges (captcha, phone verification, etc.) We also lock down millions of accounts each week that we suspect may be spam.”

He added that determining which accounts “appear to be fake” is a formidable problem. They famous, “Our team continually updates our systems and rules to remove as much spam as possible without inadvertently suspending real people or adding unnecessary friction to real people when using Twitter: None of us want to solve CAPTCHA every time we use Twitter.”

Regarding the share of pretend customers exceeding 5 p.c, he wrote, “Our precise inside estimates for the final 4 quarters have been all lower than 5% – based mostly on the methodology outlined above. Our public statements give credence to it. Musk, in fact, was not impressed and replied to all the thread with a ‘poop emoji’.

Let’s discuss spam. And let’s achieve this with the advantage of information, details and context…

— Parag Agarwal (@paraga) 16 May 2022

The daunting problem is that many accounts that – superficially appear to be pretend – are literally actual individuals. And among the spam accounts which can be really probably the most harmful – and those inflicting probably the most hurt to our customers – could seem fully professional on the floor.

— Parag Agarwal (@paraga) 16 May 2022

Our precise inside estimates for the final 4 quarters have been beneath 5% based mostly on the methodology outlined above. The error margin on our estimates offers us confidence in our public statements every quarter.

— Parag Agarwal (@paraga) 16 May 2022

When Agarwal fired different Twitter executives

Back in May, Agarwal additionally fired Kayvan Becpour, Twitter’s head of product, and Bruce Falk, head of income product on the firm. He posted saying that he would proceed to make “difficult decisions as needed” and “accept the deep complexities of our service and our business. And you can expect more change for the better.” He additionally tackled the query of individuals calling him a ‘lame-duck’ CEO, as most individuals anticipated Musk to fireside him from the corporate.

$42 million compensation

It’s not all dangerous for Agarwal. He is entitled to a hefty firm compensation of $42 million, in line with analysis agency Equilar, beforehand reported by Reuters. Keep in thoughts that neither Twitter nor Aggarwal and even Musk have ever confirmed this quantity.

The estimate consists of one yr’s price of Agarwal’s fundamental wage in addition to the accelerated vesting of all fairness awards. When Musk introduced the acquisition, Agarwal reportedly instructed staff on Monday that the social media agency’s future was unsure. Musk plans to take the corporate non-public.