Highlights:
- Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, has finally acquired Twitter.
- Parag Agrawal and Vijay Gadde were sacked by Musk shortly after his acquisition.
- Twitter has yet to name a replacement for Agrawal as CEO.
As Elon Musk completes his $44 billion bid to acquire the social network, Parag Agrawal, the chief executive of Twitter Inc., is one of the executives who plans to depart.
Ned Segal, Twitter’s chief financial officer, who joined the company in 2017, Vijaya Gadde, its head of legal, policy, and trust, and Sean Edgett, its general counsel since 2012, are all leaving the company, according to sources with knowledge of the issue who asked to remain anonymous due to the nature of the information.
In November, Agrawal took over as CEO when co-founder Jack Dorsey abruptly announced his resignation. Agrawal has been with Twitter for for ten years, most recently serving as its chief technology officer. Musk’s entry as a significant stakeholder and a vocal critic of the company’s current leadership, however, quickly ended Agrawal’s tenure as CEO.
Musk’s entry made it obvious that Agrawal was not likely to be retained in his post. “I have little faith in management,” in an early filing about the deal, Musk alleged, and the two executives exchanged public jabs. In May, Elon Musk tweeted a poop emoji in response to Agrawal’s Twitter thread defending the company’s user metrics.
The two men engaged in a heated argument early in the deal process when Musk questioned his followers whether Twitter was “dying,” according to text messages revealed during the lawsuit.”
He was confronted by Agrawal via text messaging. He wrote on April 9: “You are free to tweet ‘is twitter dying?’ or anything else about Twitter, but it’s my responsibility to tell you that it’s not helping me make Twitter better in the current context.” Musk fired back, “What did you get done this week?” And then: “I’m not joining the board this is a waste of time.”
Musk made fun of Agrawal for being on vacation in Hawaii during deal negotiations the next week in messages to a friend. “Shouldn’t he be in a war room right now?!?” Jason Calacanis, an investor, texted Musk. Does making occasional zoom calls while enjoying fruity cocktails at the Four Seasons qualify?” Musk answered.
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Musk, a reliable friend of Jack Dorsey’s, and Agrawal’s reconciliation efforts after the deal was announced also failed. “At least it became clear that you can’t work together,” Dorsey texted Musk after a group call. “That was clarifying.”
Agrawal will not go away empty-handed. According to a document, the CEO’s unvested equity awards will fully vest as part of the deal. According to research firm Equilar’s estimate, he will earn almost $42 million, according to Reuters.
Gadde has been in responsible of establishing and enforcing rules for hundreds of millions of internet users, including prominent users who are exempt from stricter content restrictions under the company’s exemptions for noteworthy posts or communications from world leaders. Musk has pledged to make Twitter a less censorship-heavy platform for free speech after buying it, a change he has called “essential to a functioning democracy.”
Gadde experienced a wave of online abuse earlier this year when Musk openly criticised Twitter’s content-related decisions. Following the attack on the Capitol by supporters of former US president Donald Trump in January 2021, the company permanently banned him. Many people anticipate that Musk will reinstate Trump’s account and other users who have been suspended for violating policies on offensive or harmful content based on his statements before he acquired the social media company.
