Jack Dorsey, the co-founder, and CEO of Twitter has announced his resignation. He is succeeded by Parag Agrawal who was previously the Chief Technical Officer and has been with the company since 2011. Agrawal is an engineering graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay who completed his master’s degree from Stanford University.
In the post announcing his resignation, Dorsey said that “My trust in Parag as Twitter’s CEO is deep. His work over the past 10 years has been transformational. It’s his time to lead.”
Who is Parag Agrawal?
Parag Agrawal was a resident of Mumbai who completed his schooling at Atomic Energy Central School. After that, he pursued his B.Tech from IIT Bombay. He then went on to Stanford University to complete his doctorate in computer science.
After getting his doctorate he worked for several big tech companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, and AT&T in research roles (All within two and half years).
He joined Twitter in 2011 as a ‘Distinguished Software Engineer’ and has been with the company for over a decade now. According to his LinkedIn profile, as the CTO of Twitter, Parag was responsible for the platform’s Technical Strategy, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Consumer, Revenue, and Science teams.
In a career spanning over 12 and half years, Parag has held many leadership positions. After working as a ‘Distinguished Software Engineer’ he was promoted to CTO in October of 2017. His early work as a CTO on the use of Artificial Intelligence to increase the relevance of tweets on Twitter timelines was widely recognized.
Agrawal was also put in charge of Project Bluesky, “an independent team of open source architects, engineers, and designers to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media that would help better control abusive and misleading information on its platform.”
The 45-year-old outgoing CEO expressed faith in his successor.
“I’ve decided to leave Twitter because I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders,” Dorsey said.
In his letter, Dorsey said, “Parag has been behind every critical decision that helped turn this company around. He’s curious, probing, rational, creative, demanding, self-aware, and humble. He leads with heart and soul, and is someone I learn from daily. My trust in him as our CEO is bone deep.”
