Musk Wanted But Thought Parag Agrawal Was ‘No Fire-Breathing Dragon’
Photo: @paraga
SAN FRANCISCO, CA (IANS) – Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk fired former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal because he was not “a fire-breathing dragon” that the social network wanted, according to a new biography of the billionaire.
American author-journalist Walter Isaacson has written the book named ‘Elon Musk’ which is “an intimate story of the most fascinating and controversial innovator of our era — a rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration, and artificial intelligence”.
According to excerpts published by the Wall Street Journal, Musk was quite opinionated about Agrawal.
“He is a nice guy, but managers should not aim to be liked. What Twitter needs is a fire-breathing dragon, and Parag is not that,” he is quoted as saying in Isaacson’s book.
In October last year, as he acquired Twitter for $44 billion, Musk informed Agrawal and former legal and public policy head Vijaya Gadde (both appointed by Jack Dorsey) that their employment with the company was terminated.
Both the executives were supposed to receive a hefty exit package.
Agrawal was last active on Twitter on October 6, 2022 (with 601.9K followers) and has not been seen active on any other social media platform, including Meta’s Threads.
In December last year, Musk released the “Twitter Files” season 2, revealing that the micro-blogging platform had a secret group that included Gadde, then CTO Agrawal and Yoel Roth, former global head of trust and safety, that made controversial decisions including “shadow banning” high-profile users without informing then CEO Dorsey.
Angel investor Alex Cohen tweeted in July this year: “I still can’t believe Parag Agrawal only had to be CEO of Twitter from 11 months to then get paid $60 million in severance and now gets to sit back and enjoy this incredible drama”.
“Pretty sure he didn’t get paid,” replied Eric Bahn who calls himself a ‘Minivan Enthusiast’ at Hustle Fund.
mrindia
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Musk ji has completely destroyed the brand twitter. its a cesspool of homophobic racist opinions now where bots run amuck. Some fire breathing dragon he is – burnt his own brand and company.
Dorsey is the one to blame – he didnt make tough calls to fix twitter while he was the chief and encouraged Musk to do what he couldn’t.
September 7, 2023Anil
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“In December last year, Musk released the “Twitter Files” season 2, revealing that the micro-blogging platform had a secret group that included Gadde, then CTO Agrawal and Yoel Roth, former global head of trust and safety, that made controversial decisions including “shadow banning” high-profile users without informing then CEO Dorsey.”
This is reason enough for Musk and Tesla to fire the executives and others who knew about this and were silent. Bring an executive in a public company comes with responsibility especially in a Social Media company that claims “Press Freedom” and “first amendment rights”.
Rights come with Responsibilities.
Musk could sue these guys for loss of value because of what the public now came to know of what these guys did in collaboration with the liberal Govt. operatives and that is throttle Truth and the rights of the people.
Actually Musk can file a lawsuit in parallel for hurting his reputation, his finances and for suppressing the rights of citizens.
Could even encourage a conservative AG to sue them for criminal intent.
September 7, 2023Maneck Bhujwala
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No wonder the public is losing trust of corporate executives and marketing managers, besides politicians and religiious leaders because of their corrupt practices
September 7, 2023