Who is Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s New CEO?


SAN FRANCISCO — When Jack Dorsey, then Twitter’s chairman of the board, pushed the company to develop its machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities in 2014 and turned to Parag Agrawal, an engineer.

When Mr Dorsey later became CEO of Twitter and needed help overhauling the company’s infrastructure, he also touched down on Mr. Agrawal.

And when Mr. Dorsey envisioned a future for Twitter in 2019, based on the concept of decentralization and again called on Mr. Agrawal for help with technologies like blockchain.

He delivered on Monday, when Mr. Dorsey had completed the delivery. resigned from his position as general manager Mr. Agrawal, 37, has been named the new leader of Twitter.

Mr Agrawal, who has been chief technology officer since 2017, is little known to the public, although even some on Twitter said they were surprised at his appointment. But behind the scenes, the Indian-born engineer was a Twitter veteran and confidant of Mr. Dorsey, who was involved in many of the company’s biggest strategic initiatives. This caused Mr Dorsey to give an enthusiastic speech about his successor. a tweet He said the board of directors was conducting a “firm” search for a new CEO and “unanimously” supported Mr Agrawal.

“It has been my choice for a while, given how deeply he understands the company and its needs,” Mr. Dorsey, 45, wrote.

In his message to employees on Monday, Mr. Agrawal highlighted his knowledge of the company and his kinship with its employees.

“I joined this company 10 years ago when it had less than 1,000 employees,” Mr. Agrawal wrote in his company email. tweeted out. “I walked in your place and saw the ups and downs, the challenges and the obstacles, the wins and the mistakes. But then and now, above all, I see the incredible impact of Twitter, our continued progress, and the exciting opportunities ahead.

Mr. Agrawal is the latest Indian-born executive to take over a major American technology company. South Asian executives are now Microsoft, Google and IBM, many of them replaced the founders of companies. To some in Silicon Valley, the rise of Mr. Agrawal was the definition of the American dream.

“It’s great to watch the incredible success of Indians in the tech world and to be a beautiful reminder of the opportunity America offers to immigrants,” said Stripe CEO Patrick Collison. chirp Congratulations to Mr Agrawal on Monday.

Still, the job of Twitter’s new chief, Mr. Agrawal, is just right for him. The San Francisco-based company faces challenges such as persuading activist investors and calming an excited Congress about its power, divisiveness, and potential to censor free speech. Mr. Agrawal has also been tasked with realizing Mr. Dorsey’s vision of decentralizing Twitter so that its users can eventually manage what is allowed on the service themselves.

Still, some tech watchers said Mr. Agrawal’s appointment made sense as he was a kind of “spiritual successor” to Mr. Dorsey: Both were quiet, polite, highly technical, and enthusiastic about an internet where power and control are given back to users. .

“He definitely sees a big picture of what Twitter should be in the world and how it should work,” said Mike Masnick, founder of the tech news site. it’s technicalMr Agrawal advised Twitter on decentralization efforts.

Born in Mumbai, Mr. Agrawal studied computer science and engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, an elite technical university. He moved to the United States in 2005 and enrolled at Stanford University to pursue a PhD in computer science. There, he joined a research group focused on databases that allow computers to store and mine large amounts of digital information.

Jennifer Widom, who runs the research lab and serves as its thesis advisor, said that even among students at Stanford, Mr. Agrawal stood out for his strong grasp of the theory that underpins mathematics and computer science.

“Having both of these skills – math and theory – can get you a long way,” he said in a phone interview. “If you are good at theory, you have the ability to be analytical, to reason, to make decisions.”

Mr. Agrawal’s focus on databases made him a natural fit for Twitter, which must balance data from tens of millions of people around the world. He joined the company in 2011 before completing his PhD. and became a key member of the company’s engineering team overseeing its advertising technologies.

Dr. “I nagged him to go on and finish his thesis,” Widom said.

The creative team was among the first on Twitter to make extensive use of machine learning, called mathematical systems that can learn certain skills by analyzing data. Using these techniques, Mr. Agrawal and his colleagues developed ways to target ads to specific users, which helped increase Twitter’s revenues and profile.

He later became a member of the group known as the Twitter Architecture Group or TAG, a team of senior engineers who review and improve the company’s projects in development.

“He was on the short list of top engineers,” said Krishna Gade, who met Mr. Agrawal in his first interview with Twitter. “Even then, it had a huge impact on the engineering direction of the company.” Mr. Gade left Twitter in 2014.

when Mr. Dorsey Returned to Twitter as CEO In 2015, Mr. Agrawal was one of the company’s lieutenants who helped refocus efforts on the “timeline” that feeds tweets to the user’s Twitter app. In 2017, Twitter promoted Mr. Agrawal to chief technology officer.

“I would call him pragmatic,” said Kevin Quennesson, who oversaw Twitter’s machine learning efforts at the time. “As one of the first engineers, he has built strong internal relationships over the past decade.”

Mr. Agrawal has kept a low profile, even as chief technology officer. He worked behind the scenes to rebuild Twitter’s technical infrastructure that has been put together for years. This led to engineering problems and prevented the company from promoting new products and services as quickly as it wanted. Mr. Agrawal helped Google and Amazon switch to using cloud computing services by streamlining Twitter’s operations.

In 2019, Mr. Dorsey said Twitter would fund an independent research initiative to create decentralized social media, allowing users to make their own moderation decisions and apply their own algorithms to promote content. He commissioned Mr. Agrawal to oversee Twitter’s contributions to the project known as Bluesky.

“We believe that empowering more individuals and third parties can help solve problems for communities and help more people,” Mr Agrawal said in an interview with Bluesky in June. “Many people want to be part of the solution, and now the only way is for them to figure out how to work on Twitter or how to prioritize their community by a company like ours. That’s part of the thinking and reasoning behind algorithmic selection.”

Mr Agrawal said at the time, Twitter was willing to go beyond the questions of what content to remove or leave on the service and instead consider how algorithms remove content.

“Our role has changed from ‘we host a bunch of content’ to ‘directing people to what they’re interested in. ‘How and in what context does something get attention?’ We think in terms of What you host and what you don’t, is the problem of 10 years ago.”

Mr. Agrawal also led Twitter’s effort to include cryptocurrencies on the platform, allowing users to post tips in cryptocurrency. like bitcoin. And he supported Twitter’s efforts to be transparent about its algorithmic flaws, urging the company to make public its findings that a photo-cropping algorithm it used was biased.

Agrawal’s emphasis on product development appealed to insiders who believed Twitter was moving too slowly to promote new products, one person familiar with the succession process said. His appointment, they said, could also help Twitter reflect the success of other companies that have appointed engineering leaders to oversee their turnaround efforts.

Mr. Agrawal will receive an annual salary of $1 million and bonuses, as well as limited stock units and $12.5 million worth of performance-based stock units. company application On Monday.

“Parag has been behind every critical decision that has helped turn this company around,” Mr. Dorsey tweeted. “As our CEO, I have a lot of confidence in him.”





Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *