After Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, and Satya Nadella CEO of Microsoft, another person of Indian origin has become the CEO of a leading big tech company.
SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey stepped down on Monday as chief executive officer (CEO) of the US microblogging and social networking giant.
Parag Agrawal, the chief technical officer (CTO) at Twitter, replaced Dorsey, the company said in an official statement.
Jack Dorsey, who co-founded Twitter in 2006, has been serving as CEO of both Twitter and payment firm Square. “It’s finally time for me to leave” he tweeted a long statement, saying the company was “ready to move on.”
Dorsey said he had “deep” trust in his replacement. “I’m deeply grateful for his skill, heart, and soul. It’s his time to lead,” he said.
Dorsey’s resignation marks a significant shift at Twitter, which has navigated years of pressure from investors who thought it did not make enough money and criticism from US government and opposition, particularly from Republican lawmakers who have complained Twitter has helped stifle conservative voices in social media.
The most prominent of those voices was that of former President Donald J. Trump, who used his Twitter feed to threaten his enemies and to keep his allies in line. Twitter barred Trump shortly after the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Dorsey co-founded Twitter in 2006 and became CEO the following year.
In 2008, co-founder Ev Williams and board member Fred Wilson pushed out Dorsey as the social media site gained steam with users and they determined he was unfit to lead the company.
But after years of stagnant growth and a slumping share price, Dorsey returned as CEO in 2015 while continuing to lead Square.
In early 2020, Dorsey faced calls from Elliott Management Corp to step down, after the hedge fund argued that he was paying too little attention to Twitter while also running Square Inc.
Who is Parag Agrawal?
Parag Agrawal joined Twitter in 2011, and has been the firm’s head of technology since 2017. He had recently been working on technologies associated with cryptocurrencies, which have become a fascination of the tech industry’s power brokers, including Dorsey.
After Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, and Satya Nadella CEO of Microsoft, another person of Indian origin has become the CEO of a leading big tech company.
Taking on the new role as Twitter’s CEO, Agrawal said, “I look forward to building on everything we have accomplished under Jack’s leadership and I am incredibly energized by the opportunities ahead. By continuing to improve our execution, we will deliver tremendous value for our customers and shareholders as we reshape the future of public conversation.”
Parag Agrawal did his Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. After passing out from IIT, he got his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University.
He worked at held leadership positions at Microsoft Research and Yahoo Research. In October 2011, he joined Twitter and became Twitter’s first Distinguished Engineer due to his work across revenue and consumer engineering.
Parag’s work at Twitter had a huge impact on the re-acceleration of audience growth in 2016 and 2017. In October 2018, Twitter made Parag the CTO of the company.
As CTO, Parag has been responsible for the Company’s technical strategy, leading work to improve development velocity while advancing the state of Machine Learning across the company.
In 2019, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey made Parag head Project Bluesky. For that unaware, Project Bluesky was developed by an independent team of open source architects to control misinformation on Twitter.
On 29 November 2021, Jack Dorsey resigned from Twitter and the Twitter board announced Parag as the new CEO of Twitter.
