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When Dorsey later grew to become Twitter’s CEO and wanted assist overhauling the corporate’s infrastructure, he additionally tapped Agrawal.
And when Dorsey envisioned a future for Twitter in 2019 that may be primarily based on the idea of decentralization and applied sciences such because the blockchain, he once more pulled in Agrawal to assist.
On Monday, Dorsey made the handover full when he stepped down as CEO and Agrawal, 37, was named Twitter’s new chief.
Agrawal, the chief expertise officer since 2017, is little-known to the general public, with even some Twitter insiders saying they had been shocked by his appointment. However behind the scenes, the India-born engineer has been a Twitter veteran and confidant of Dorsey’s who has been concerned in most of the firm’s greatest strategic initiatives. That made Dorsey effusive about his successor, saying in a tweet that the board had run a “rigorous” seek for a brand new CEO and had “unanimously” endorsed Agrawal.
“He’s been my selection for a while given how deeply he understands the corporate and its wants,” Dorsey, 45, wrote.
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In his personal message to workers Monday, Agrawal emphasised his data of the corporate and his kinship with its staff.
“I joined this firm 10 years in the past when there have been fewer than 1,000 workers,” Agrawal wrote within the firm e mail, which he additionally tweeted. “I’ve walked in your footwear, I’ve seen the ups and downs, the challenges and obstacles, the wins and the errors. However then and now, above all else, I see Twitter’s unimaginable impression, our continued progress, and the thrilling alternatives forward of us.”
Agrawal turns into the newest India-born govt to take over a significant American expertise firm. Executives of South Asian descent are actually on the helm of firms together with Microsoft, Google and IBM, with lots of them succeeding the businesses’ founders. To some in Silicon Valley, Agrawal’s elevation was the definition of the American dream.
“Great to observe the wonderful success of Indians within the expertise world and reminder of the chance America gives to immigrants,” Patrick Collison, CEO of Stripe, stated in a tweet Monday congratulating Agrawal.
But as Twitter’s new chief, Agrawal has his work minimize out for him. The corporate, which is predicated in San Francisco, faces challenges, similar to placating activist traders and calming an agitated Congress about its energy, divisiveness and potential to censor free speech. Agrawal can be charged with finishing up Dorsey’s imaginative and prescient for decentralizing Twitter in order that its customers can ultimately govern what’s allowable on the service themselves.
Nonetheless, some tech observers stated that Agrawal’s appointment made sense as a result of he was a form of “non secular successor” to Dorsey: Each are quiet, well mannered, deeply technical and enthused about an web the place energy and management are given again to customers.
“He undoubtedly takes a big-picture view of what ought to Twitter be on this planet and the way ought to it work,” Mike Masnick, the founding father of the expertise information web site Techdirt, who has suggested Twitter on decentralization efforts, stated of Agrawal.
Born in Mumbai, Agrawal studied pc science and engineering on the Indian Institute of Expertise. In 2005, he moved to america and enrolled at Stanford College to pursue a doctorate in pc science. There, he joined a analysis group centered on databases, which let computer systems retailer and mine massive quantities of digital info.
Even amongst college students at Stanford, Agrawal stood out for his sturdy grasp of the mathematics and the speculation that underpins pc science, stated Jennifer Widom, who led the analysis lab and served as his thesis adviser.
“Having each of these abilities — math and concept — can take you a good distance,” she stated in a cellphone interview. “In case you are good on the concept, you could have the flexibility to be analytical, to purpose, to make choices.”
Agrawal’s deal with databases made him a pure match for Twitter, which should juggle knowledge arriving from tens of hundreds of thousands of individuals throughout the globe. He joined the corporate in 2011 earlier than finishing his doctorate and have become a key member of the engineering workforce that oversaw the corporate’s promoting applied sciences.
“I saved nagging him to go forward and end his thesis,” Widom stated.
The adverts workforce was among the many first inside Twitter to make in depth use of so-called machine studying, mathematical techniques that may be taught explicit abilities by analyzing knowledge. Utilizing these methods, Agrawal and his colleagues developed methods to focus on adverts to explicit customers, which helped increase Twitter’s revenues and his profile.
He then grew to become a member of what was referred to as the Twitter Structure Group, or TAG, a workforce of high engineers who reviewed and improved the corporate’s initiatives that had been beneath improvement.
“He was on the shortlist of high engineers,” stated Krishna Gade, who met Agrawal when he first interviewed with Twitter. “Even then, he had lots of affect on the engineering path of the corporate.” Gade left Twitter in 2014.
When Dorsey returned to Twitter as CEO in 2015, Agrawal was one in all his lieutenants who helped refocus the corporate’s efforts on the “timeline” that feeds tweets right into a consumer’s Twitter app. In 2017, Twitter promoted Agrawal to chief expertise officer.
“I’d name him pragmatic,” stated Kevin Quennesson, who oversaw Twitter’s machine studying efforts on the time. “As one of many early engineers, he constructed sturdy inner relationships over the past decade.”
Whilst chief expertise officer, Agrawal has saved a low profile. He labored behind the scenes to rebuild Twitter’s technical infrastructure, which had been cobbled collectively through the years. That led to engineering issues and prevented the corporate from introducing new services and products as rapidly because it needed. Agrawal helped Twitter shift to utilizing cloud computing providers from Google and Amazon, streamlining its operations.
In 2019, Dorsey stated that Twitter would fund an unbiased analysis initiative to create decentralized social media, permitting customers to make their very own moderation choices and apply their very own algorithms to advertise content material. He tapped Agrawal to supervise Twitter’s contributions to the undertaking, referred to as Bluesky.
“We consider empowering extra people and third events might assist remedy issues for communities and assist extra individuals,” Agrawal stated in an interview about Bluesky in June. “Lots of people wish to be a part of the answer and now the one manner is for them to determine the right way to work at Twitter or work out the right way to have their neighborhood prioritized by an organization like ours. That’s among the pondering and reasoning behind algorithmic selection.”
Twitter was keen to maneuver past questions of what content material to take away or go away up on its service, Agrawal stated on the time, and to think about how algorithms raise content material as a substitute.
“Our position has shifted from ‘we host a bunch of content material’ to ‘we information individuals towards what they’re interested by,’” he stated. “We’re fascinated about this by way of, ‘How does one thing get consideration and in what context?’ What do you host or not host is an issue of 10 years in the past.”
Agrawal has additionally managed Twitter’s effort to include cryptocurrencies into the platform, letting customers ship ideas in cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. And he has supported efforts to be clear about Twitter’s algorithmic errors, urging the corporate to go public with its findings {that a} photo-cropping algorithm it used was biased.
Agrawal’s emphasis on product improvement appealed to insiders who believed Twitter had moved too slowly to introduce new merchandise, an individual accustomed to the succession course of stated. His appointment might additionally assist Twitter mirror the success of different firms which have tapped engineering leaders to supervise turnaround efforts, they stated.
Agrawal will obtain an annual wage of $1 million, plus bonuses, in addition to restricted inventory items and performance-based inventory items valued at $12.5 million, in response to an organization submitting Monday.
“Parag has been behind each crucial choice that helped flip this firm round,” Dorsey stated in his tweet. “My belief in him as our CEO is bone-deep.”
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