Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal on whistleblower story
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On the other hand we have the Twitter CEO who does not have any comparable track record and has all to gain by trying to deflect and a lot to lose by admiting that the company under him has serious issues. He does have some "interesting" things he said on the record though. Twitter also has a track record of severe security issues.
Twitter IMHO is not as evil as for example Facebook is but I do feel they are pretty stagnant and don't seem to get a lot done. They are only in the news because of some controversies it feels like.
I think Mr. Agrawals days as Twitter CEO are counted. If Musk ends up buying Twitter he'll surely fire him. And if the deal does not go through then I'm sure the board will have to think hard if the performance was good enough.
PS: I think it reflects poorly on him to mention alleged "ineffective leadership and poor performance" on Mudge's part in the email to all employees. Crap like that is probably the reason why Mudge is now hitting back. He is someone that seems to value honor and doesn't take shit from others.
My guess is he’s blustering to shore up his negotiating position, and will have to make Twitter whole in the range of $10b. Or he believes his own tweets, will go to trial, and be forced to make the purchase.
Like everyone, I’m bad at predicting the future.
How does that work with a shareholder vote scheduled before the trial?
Businesses are allowed to fail after all…
Running psychological experiments on users.
Amplifying hate groups associated with everything from genocide in Myanmar to the groups that brought Kyle Rittenhouse to Kenosha.
Blatantly breaking state facial recognition laws.
I’m sure that’s just scratching the surface.
Facebook’s senior leadership has shown a pathological pattern of lying. They’ve also predated on children in a way Twitter either hasn’t prioritised or hasn’t been able to. The only reason Instagram for Kids is because of literal Congressional hearings.
Caveat emptor and Cui bono.
That "as" is important nuance.
Personally I think that's fair when looking at Facebook's history[1].
Freudian slip much?
Twitter is just worse at executing.
The whole second paragraph is just useless fluff. The "important work" they are doing, with no references at all to any specifics, it's just a feel-good word jumble.
He also does not make any claims that Mudge's accusations are patently wrong, it's couched in "what we've seen so far" and derided for lacking "important context".
This missive from the CEO reads as rushed, ill-informed, and overly emotional. Which could lead many to assume the accusations by Mudge are more accurate than not, with or without the important "context".
Agreed. Bad email. Zero specifics. Not even an apology for letting the situation get to this point. Just empty promises and mud slinging. (Also, formatting? Also, an email? You know what your product is, right? Did you think this wouldn’t get leaked?)
And it doesn't bode well for employees to see their CEO mud slinging at former employees like that. You could be next! Besides, surely they know such messages eventually reach the public eye and give people a view into the culture in the company?
While it is distasteful I think it is also relevant. If twitter have an actual reason for firing him they'll want to make it clear, so that it doesn't look like they got rid of him to try and sweep his concerns under the carpet.
In practice it's hard to say whether it works. They can't go into detail about why he was dismissed which means no one on the outside is really any the wiser about whether he was dismissed because twitter had legitimate concerns about his performance or whether they don't like what he had to say.
Doesn't mean they are false, just a reason why to mention the reason of the termination.
Gotta love how Parag goes straight to attempting to discredit the person instead of focusing first on the claims.
Coming right out of the gates with an ad-hominem attack like this is extremely unprofessional and also reckless.
It's unusual circumstances. Im sure if there wasn't a huge newspiece in CNN Parag/twitter would have said exactly nothing.
I've been evaluating alternatives to it, but I haven't found one with a nice technology focused subculture. I want to be able to follow and chat about databases, tech tips, funny anecdotes about tech, and etc.
Also, implying that the dude who worked at DARPA and, maybe even more impressive, who was part of L0pht is incompetent is ludicrous.
These managment types that refuse to see that core components are just bad/wrong so that the right thing is to scrap and replace. However, that is always seen as expensive and very disruptive. So if you can't come up with a way to change the tire while the car is running 65mph down the highway, then you're not able to do your job as hired. Therefore, incompetent. QED /s
Discovery would be hilarious.
It may be that Twitter's HR records say "fired for cause: ineffective leadership and poor performance" in which case the statement would be technically true.
It's much more likely that Twitter's HR records say something like "fired, not a good fit" in which case it's back to reputational harm.
He was ineffective at keeping quiet about security problems to governance parties, and performed poorly at persuading peers not reporting to him to fix things they weren’t incentivized on.
Is he not shooting himself in the foot here? This makes it look more like they got rid of him for trying to do his job accurately and was annoying everyone with all of these "security problems."
It is possible for someone to be a great hacker but a mediocre manager.
Twitter's taken a lot of body blows recently and Parag is obviously trying to motivate his people. He's not necessarily lying even if it's a rather unprofessional way to speak I'll of someone who's been fired.
He was also a DARPA PM, which definitely requires management/executive skills.
Meh. I've worked in government and disagree with this assessment.
As far as the "great hacker but a mediocre manager" thing, same can be said of Parag... "good CTO but mediocre CEO".
OTOH he has done it before: https://twitter.com/paraga/status/1513354622466867201