Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s new CEO, will receive a bonus of $12 million to speed up changes after investors complained that Jack Dorsey was too slow. The new executive will accelerate bitcoin payments and allow users to manage moderation.
Agrawal, who has been Twitter’s chief tech officer for four years, was made CEO of $11billion-dollar company on Monday. This was immediately effective after Dorsey (45), resigned via email. He later tweeted.
Agrawal, now 37 years old, is a Twitter Insider. He joined the company in 2011 and has been with it ever since. Dorsey was the first Twitter CEO and cofounder. He looked to Agrawal, a 37-year-old engineer from India as his trusted confidant. Infrastructure of the company.
Agrawal has a net worth in excess of $1.52million after climbing up the Twitter ranks. With this promotion, he will receive an annual salary of $1million, plus bonuses, as well as restricted and performance-based stock unit bonuses valued at $12.5million, according to a company report filed Monday.
Parag Agrawal, left, has been promoted to his position as Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer for four years. He was previously the company’s $11billion CEO. This move came immediately after Jack Dorsey, 45, decided to resign via email.
Agrawal’s twitter bio (above), already lists his new title. In a response to Dorsey’s resignation, the CEO wrote that he had walked in Dorsey’s shoes and remembered the many ups and downs of his 10 year-long tenure at the company.
Agrawal began his Twitter career as an engineer, where he helped to develop targeted ads. This increased Twitter’s revenues dramatically. Agrawal quickly rose to the rank of Dorsey’s lieutenant.
Agrawal, who was responsible for building the site’s artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities in 2014, was also a crucial player in 2019 when he developed blockchain technologies.
Agrawal, despite being the mastermind of many Twitter’s most important moves, managed to remain low-profile as Dorsey was faced with fierce backlash due to controversial decisions such as locking the Indian National Congress account and banning Donald Trump from Twitter.
In 2019, Agrawal oversaw Twitter’s moderation project, known as Bluesky, which allows users to make their own moderation decisions and apply their own algorithms to promote content, according to The New York Times.
He branded the project as a role-shift ‘from “we host a bunch of content” to “we guide people toward what they are interested in,”‘ he told The Times in an interview about Bluesky in June.
“We believe that more people can be empowered and work with third parties to help them solve their problems and reach more people.
Many people desire to join the solution. The only way for them is to find out how they can work with Twitter, or to make their community priority by working at a company such as ours. That’s some of the thinking and reasoning behind algorithmic choice,’ Agrawal added.
Given Agrawal’s track record throughout his decade-long career at Twitter, Dorsey wrote in his resignation email Monday: ‘Parag has been behind every critical decision that helped turn this company around.’
Agrawal handed Dorsey the title of CEO to Agrawal, which suggests the leader will make faster decisions and implement change. This is something that Twitter investors have long criticized Dorsey for.
Twitter’s inaugural CEO was Dorsey in 2007, one year after his co-founding of the site. He resigned as CEO more than twenty years later and said that Agrawal would take his place. Dorsey stated that he has a deep trust in Agrawal as the CEO.
Agrawal, who has been a consistent promotor of product development, was an attractive candidate for Dorsey’s resignation.
According to a source familiar with the process, insiders are critical of Twitter’s slow growth, particularly when compared to Facebook competitors, and they hope Agrawal’s arrival will help foster greater improvement.
Concerns were raised about Dorsey’s split of his time between Twitter and Square Inc (which he is still the CEO). Both companies are multimillion dollar businesses.
Agrawal’s promotion surprised some Twitter users, and other twitter users worried that Dorsey was still involved in the business’s affairs.
Dorsey announced also that he will continue to be a member of the board for the rest of his term which expires in May-ish to assist Parag with his transition.
“And then, I’ll quit the board. Why don’t you stay? Or become the chair? Parag should have the room he requires to succeed. To return to my earlier point, I think it is crucial that a company can be independent of its founders’ influence and direction. Dorsey also added this in his email resignation.
Agrawal’s nomination was unanimous, he said. This came after “the board ran an extensive process that considered all options”.
Agrawal resides in San Francisco with Vineta, his wife, and their two-year old son Ansh. He even has his own Twitter account under @littleansh
Agrawal, the new CEO of Twitter, will have very difficult targets to achieve. Twitter had announced that they would double their annual revenue in 2023, and triple its daily active users.
Dorsey declared that his trust in Dorsey was deep. He made sure that he noted his one wish for Twitter Inc, before signing off.
Dorsey, despite his niceties and a Monday letter explaining why he had not been pushed from the company, insisted that it was not. After explaining that he worked hard to make sure the company could separate from its founders and founders, Dorsey then praised himself by pointing out that there are not many founders who choose their company above their ego.
However, it wasn’t the first time Dorsey would be fired as a leader at Twitter. In 2008, he was fired because he claimed a lot of his work hours were spent on other activities like fashion design and yoga. He also preferred improvements to Twitter over the loss of revenue.
Dorsey was appointed executive chairman on March 11, 2011. He later returned to the company when Dick Costolo became CEO.
While Dorsey will remain on Twitter’s board of directors for the remainder of his term (which runs until 2022), he will step down as chairman. Bret Taylor, a current member, will take over those duties. Dorsey informed staff that he would be leaving the company after his term was up.
Twitter has trailed its competition in the stock exchange for the last three years
Twitter shares rose 11% after the news about Dorsey’s resignation broke. However, they then plunged 6 percent and fell further to 5 percent yesterday.
The Times reports that Agrawal is now focused on cryptocurrency, just like his predecessor. He wants Twitter to decentralize more, as The Times reported.
His previous work included allowing users to submit tips via Twitter in crypto form such as Bitcoin.
The Stanford University graduate was described by Dorsey as ‘curious, probing, rational, creative, demanding, self-aware and humble,’ while Kevin Quennesson, who oversaw Twitter’s machine learning efforts when Agrawal was promoted to CTO in 2017, told The Times that he would call the new executive ‘pragmatic’.
‘As one of the early engineers, he built strong internal relationships over the last decade,’ Quennesson added.
Bret Taylor, president and chief operating officers at Salesforce, was appointed the new chairman of Twitter’s board.
According to Agrawal’s LinkedIn profile, he worked on research teams for AT&T, Microsoft and Yahoo! Agrawal was a member of research teams for AT&T, Microsoft and Yahoo! before he accepted a job at Twitter.
Vineeta, an Indian immigrant, now lives in San Francisco with her two-year old son Ansh. Ansh even has his own Twitter account under the name @littleansh.
Agrawal sent a Monday tweet in response to Dorsey’s resignation. He recalled how he joined the company when it had less than 1000 employees 10 years back.
“I have walked in your shoes. I’ve witnessed the triumphs and defeats. The challenges and hurdles. The wins and the failures. Let’s start at the beginning.
Agrawal, who assumed the role immediately, was attacked by Republicans. They cited Agrawal’s tweets from the past, in which he claimed that Twitter wasn’t bound by the First Amendment.
A 2010 tweet that he called all white people “racists” was republished Monday. This sparked anger and questions as to whether Agrawal can be impartial enough to decide who is banned and who can freely tweet.
“If Muslims aren’t going to make a distinction among extremists and Muslims, why should they distinguish between white people from racists?” Agrawal posted this tweet on October 26, 2010,
The tweet apparently quoted Aasif Manndvi (comedian), who was featured in an episode on The Daily Show pitting Muslims against blacks. The segment played on the irrational fear and anger of these minorities.
After being named Twitter’s new CEO on Monday, Parag Agrawal tweeted a controversial message in 2010.
Sen Marsha Blackburn (a Republican from Tennessee) shared the tweet.
Mia Cathell (a Post Millennial News Editor) joked that he does not know how he can scrub tweets.
Others who celebrated Dorsey’s departure will likely be disappointed with the replacement. Agrawal said last year that he would disregard the First Amendment.
Lauren Boebert (Colorado Rep) tweeted “Jack Dorsey”: “Jack Dorsey has been rumored as Twitter’s CEO. Great. Great.
“Hopefully, someone will believe in freedom of speech and the Constitution and take over the reins to reinstate all the Americans wrongly expelled.”
CNBC announced that Dorsey would be leaving Twitter. Twitter shares soared 11 percent and Square Inc’s rose 3 percent.
NASDAQ declared that trading would be stopped on Monday morning at 10:01 AM. However, it resumed shortly after Dorsey announced the decision. The stock market dropped 6 percent, and is now up only 5% compared to the day prior.
Shares of the social media company dropped almost 1 percent in the afternoon. As of Tuesday morning, the shares had fallen nearly 3 percent.
Dorsey tweeted Sunday: “I Love Twitter.”