Musk Said to Begin Firing Twitter’s Top Executives

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/27/technology/musk-twitter.html

by petilon • 4 years ago

52 28 4 years ago

petilon4• 4 years ago

When you're the wealthiest person in the world you don't have to accept insults from anyone.

Twitter offered Musk a seat on its board. But six days later, CEO Parag Agrawal tweeted that Musk "would not be joining the board after all" [1].

Musk's bid to buy the company quickly followed. And CEO Parag Agrawal has been fired.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/26/elon-musk...

operatingthetan• 4 years ago

Already off to a questionable start then, making business decisions based on grudges.

PainfullyNormal• 4 years ago

It's not based on a grudge. It's based on previous conversations with Agrawal and him coming to the conclusion (along with Jack Dorsey) that Agrawal won't work with him to make the changes he wants to see.

https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1575598387335901190

philosopher1234• 4 years ago

What was the insult?

petilon4• 4 years ago

He was disinvited from joining the board. (Personally, I think CEO Parag Agrawal had good reason for doing so, if you remember Musk's tweets from that time, regarding changes he wanted to see in Twitter.)

jo6gwb• 4 years ago

What's the point of having fuck you money if you never say fuck you? Bobby 'Axe' Axelrod

nkozyra• 4 years ago

I suppose the big question is whether this makes Twitter more or less attractive to the audience at large.

Social media is extremely fickle and driven by mass migrations. All it takes is a few key players moving and the house of cards collapses.

I think Facebook is a textbook example, having once been the cool alternative to MySpace, which was the cool alternative to web 1.0 and Friendster, etc.

petilon4• 4 years ago

Right... running a social media company is different from running a rocket company or an electric car company. I wouldn't bet against Musk though. He has already adjusted his position on what is allowed on Twitter, now that he is running the company. Previously he said anything that is legal would be allowed but now he says Twitter won't be a "free-for-all hellscape where anything can be said with no consequences"! [1]

[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1585619322239561728/phot...

version_five• 4 years ago

Twitter is funny imo because it started as the microblogging service nobody wanted or understood ("nobody cares what you had for breakfast") but somehow got media traction to become an often quoted source for stuff. My perception was the chicken came before the egg, ie media pushed Twitter as a source when it was still irrelevant, and as a consequence it became relevant. So if it loses that media support, it's not immediately clear to me if it will become self sustaining because of its user base. Maybe. Or maybe they will go wherever mainstream media gives the most attention.

prvit2• 4 years ago

Agrawal is the big winner here, he managed to sell the company for an outrageous amount of money.

lupire4• 4 years ago

It's not Agrawal's company. He's a winner for how much he got in his golden parachute.

ggm• 4 years ago

Doubtless they received magnificent parting terms, and are now free of a significant burden.

dontbenebby• 4 years ago

So what will they do next, now that the world is less tolerant of the type of rich person who destroys a company then tries to retreat onto a yacht or a ranch or something. Since COVID fell, many rapists have hung themselves[1,2] or been imprisoned,... and "The Europeans" are seizing their yachts one by one[3,4,5]?

(It's like I told Mike Nelson in the hall at the hacker convention -- there's no EU wide intelligence agency, and one day men with guns with come into your home without permission and do a hell of a lot more than knock on the door and go away after being politely told they never should have been let into the building without a warrant[6].)

-- [1] https://www.npr.org/2022/02/19/1081961087/jeffrey-epstein-je... [2] https://www.npr.org/2022/04/14/1092825114/germany-seizes-dil... [3] https://www.npr.org/2022/04/05/1090999672/russian-oligarch-y... [4] https://www.npr.org/2022/05/06/1097101058/russian-oligarch-f... [5] https://www.npr.org/2021/06/23/1009579599/john-mcafee-softwa... [6] It's nothing personal, but I value my privacy, just because I sometimes overshare doesn't mean folks are entitled to know whatever they want whenever they want.

genmud• 4 years ago

No surprise. It became clear that when Parag took over from Jack, he wouldn’t tolerate anyone who wasn’t a yes man and gutted their security/abuse teams.

pasttense01• 4 years ago

Doesn't everyone want to shed a tear?: CEO Parag Agrawal will only get an estimated $42 million if he is terminated within 12 months of a change in control at the social media company, according to research firm Equilar.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-ceo-set-receive-4...

rasz• 4 years ago

Wonder if Elon will try to claw some of it back using Mudge testimony.

yalogin• 4 years ago

If the last 6-12 months is any indication, lot of the journalists and Musk critics will be banned from the platform too. I am sure he has a list ready.

encryptluks2• 4 years ago

But the free speech!!! And bots!!! Heck, I bet what happens is he amplifies the bots to make it seem like the public supports everything he does. That is what this is all about. People are too manipulated by perceived public perception not realizing they are being deceived.

illuminerdy• 4 years ago

Musk Said to Begin Firing Twitter’s Top Executives

And nothing of value was lost.

I look forward to seeing what Musk has in store for Twitter. It's been a biased cesspool for a long time now. Maybe he can at least make it a less biased cesspool.

JSchmoe• 4 years ago

Same. Looking forward to left-wing content being treated equally. Twitter did some internal research to find out their biases a while ago: https://cdn.cms-twdigitalassets.com/content/dam/blog-twitter...

Musk Said to Begin Firing Twitter’s Top Executives

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