Agrawal is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Know-how (IIT) Bombay. He additionally has a PhD in Laptop Science from Stanford College and has interned with different corporations equivalent to Microsoft, Yahoo, and AT&T Labs. He first joined Twitter in 2011, so he has labored right here for practically 11 years. Beforehand, he was Twitter’s Chief Know-how Officer (CTO) and was appointed to the position in 2018. As reported beforehand, he performed a task within the firm’s technical technique, particularly round machine studying and AI. He additionally led efforts on scaling Twitter Adverts programs.
Elon Musk now owns Twitter, after paying billion for the social community. (Picture credit score: Reuters)
Agrawal vs Elon Musk
Whereas Musk has fired Agrawal, the connection between the 2 didn’t all the time have equivalent to rocky begin, no less than publicly. Again in April, when Musk had purchased a majority stake in Twitter, Agrawal welcomed him. In reality, that’s nonetheless the pinned tweet on his profile. “I’m excited to share that we’re appointing @elonmusk to our board! Via conversations with Elon in latest weeks, it grew to become clear to us that he would deliver nice worth to our Board,” the now-sacked Twitter CEO had written again in April this yr.
I’m excited to share that we’re appointing @elonmusk to our board! Via conversations with Elon in latest weeks, it grew to become clear to us that he would deliver nice worth to our Board.
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) April 5, 2022
Musk had additionally tweeted saying, “Trying ahead to working with Parag & Twitter board to make vital enhancements to Twitter in coming months!” However Musk then refused to hitch the board and adopted it up as a take-it-or-leave-it acquisition provide.
Agarwal had tried to disregard all of the chatter and tweeted in direction of the tip of April, “I took this job to alter Twitter for the higher, course appropriate the place we have to, and strengthen the service. Happy with our individuals who proceed to do the work with focus and urgency regardless of the noise.”
However it was clear that Musk didn’t approve of the way in which issues had been being run on the firm. In Could, Musk modified his tune and began elevating points in regards to the person account on Twitter, alleging that a lot of customers had been pretend and that the corporate had not been sincere about its person base.
20% pretend/spam accounts, whereas 4 instances what Twitter claims, might be *a lot* larger.
My provide was based mostly on Twitter’s SEC filings being correct.
Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to indicate proof of <5%.
This deal can’t transfer ahead till he does.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 17, 2022
This compelled Agrawal to concern a protracted thread in Could 2022, countering the declare of faux customers. He had written on the time, “We droop over half one million spam accounts on daily basis, often earlier than any of you even see them on Twitter. We additionally lock tens of millions of accounts every week that we suspect could also be spam – if they’ll’t move human verification challenges (captchas, telephone verification, and so on).”
He added that determining which accounts “look pretend superficially” is a tough problem. He famous, “Our staff updates our programs and guidelines always to take away as a lot spam as attainable, with out inadvertently suspending actual individuals or including pointless friction for actual individuals after they use Twitter: none of us wish to clear up a captcha each time we use Twitter.”
Concerning the proportion of faux customers being greater than 5 per cent, he had written, “Our precise inner estimates for the final 4 quarters had been all effectively below 5% – based mostly on the methodology outlined above. The error margins on our estimates give us confidence in our public statements every quarter.” Musk, after all, wasn’t impressed and replied to this whole thread with a ‘poop emoji’.
Let’s speak about spam. And let’s achieve this with the advantage of information, information, and context…
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022
The arduous problem is that many accounts which look pretend superficially – are literally actual individuals. And among the spam accounts which are literally probably the most harmful – and trigger probably the most hurt to our customers – can look completely authentic on the floor.
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022
Our precise inner estimates for the final 4 quarters had been all effectively below 5% – based mostly on the methodology outlined above. The error margins on our estimates give us confidence in our public statements every quarter.
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022
When Agarwal fired different Twitter executives
Again in Could, Agrawal had additionally fired Kayvon Beykpour, who was head of Twitter Product and Bruce Falck, lead for income product on the firm. He had posted saying he would proceed to make “arduous choices as wanted,” and “embrace the deep complexities of our service and our enterprise. And you may count on extra change for the higher.”
He additionally tackled the query of individuals calling him a ‘lame-duck’ CEO given most individuals anticipated that Musk would sack him when he took over the corporate.
Compensation of $42 million
It’s not all dangerous for Agrawal. He’s entitled to a hefty firm compensation of $42 million, in keeping with analysis agency Equilar, which was reported earlier by Reuters. Remember that Twitter has by no means confirmed this quantity. The estimate features a yr’s price of Agrawal’s base wage plus accelerated vesting of all fairness awards. When Musk introduced the takeover, Agrawal had reportedly informed staff on Monday that the way forward for the social media agency is unsure. Musk has plans to take the corporate personal.