Elon Musk fired key Twitter executives on Thursday, one of his first moves as the social media platform’s official owner. Musk fired CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, general counsel Sean Edgett, and head of legal policy, trust, and safety Vijaya Gadde, according to reports from the New York Times, CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and other outlets.
According to multiple sources, the deal is complete, which is what gave Musk the mandate to clean house among the executive ranks. Tesla CEO Elon Musk had previously chastised Gadde on Twitter for her role in the decision to ban former President Donald Trump from the platform. He has also had run-ins with Agrawal. Musk publicly mocked the CEO, who took over for founder Jack Dorsey late last year, with poop emojis. It didn’t get any better in private. As revealed by chat logs disclosed in discovery in the legal battle between the billionaire and the social network, the two exchanged text messages indicating a falling out.
Musk was rumoured to have said that he wants to cut 75% of Twitter’s staff, but he later backtracked on that statement — still, gutting four executives on a Thursday night isn’t reassuring to the company’s remaining employees. Even Twitter co-founder Biz Stone commented on the upheaval.
Thank you to @paraga, @vijaya, and @nedsegal for the collective contribution to Twitter. Massive talents, all, and beautiful humans each!
— Biz Stone (@biz) October 28, 2022
Since Agrawal took over for Dorsey, Twitter has seen a significant shift in executive personnel. Agrawal was the company’s CTO before becoming CEO; he joined Twitter in 2011. However, as part of Agrawal’s restructuring, two executives stepped down: Twitter’s Chief Design Officer Dantley Davis, who joined the company in 2019, and Head of Engineering Michael Montano, who joined in 2011.
Soon after, Twitter lost two more executives: Rinki Sethi, chief information security officer, and Peiter Zatko, head of security (Mudge). Keyvon Beykpour, Twitter’s GM of Consumer, announced in May that he would be leaving the company after seven years after Agrawal asked him to. At the same time, Twitter’s revenue product lead, Bruce Falck, left the company. Twitter’s leadership will look very different under Musk’s control, and this is just the beginning.
