Parag Agrawal: the Twitter CEO sparring with Elon Musk

It’s hard to know which part of Parag Agrawal’s job as Twitter chief executive has been the worst, since he took over 10 months ago. There was the advertising downturn that left the social media company floundering as it tried to keep up with the overly ambitious financial goals he inherited. There was the uninvited takeover bid from Elon Musk that landed after less than five months, throwing the company into limbo and torpedoing any grand plans he may have had.

And then in May, after Musk first got cold feet about the $44bn deal and claimed Twitter was understating the number of spam accounts on its service, Agrawal laid out a detailed defence in a series of tweets. Musk’s response: a single poop emoji conveying his disdain.

Handling the irrepressible and mercurial Musk is not something any adversary would sign up for. That Agrawal faced down the world’s richest man and this week appeared to be on the brink of victory is likely to be the highlight of his stint at the top. But the low-key engineer who has suffered the indignity of Musk’s public insults is now facing likely ejection from his post — albeit with a $60.1mn golden parachute strapped to his back.

Musk’s surprise declaration this week that he was ready to buy Twitter on the original terms came three months after he tried to back out of the acquisition, and two weeks before a showdown in a Delaware courtroom over Twitter’s insistence that the original deal should stand. By the end of the week, the judge overseeing the case had postponed the legal confrontation until November to give more time for the two sides to reach a resolution. It is still unclear if and when the Twitter sale will happen.

Agrawal has been dealt “a horrible hand of cards”, says Bruce Daisley, former head of Twitter’s operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. But, he adds: “He stood up to Elon, he stood by his principles, he didn’t equivocate.”

For others, however, it is not the CEO himself but Twitter’s board — of which he is a member — that deserves the credit, along with the lawyers behind the bulletproof sales contract. Agrawal has often seemed sidelined and frustrated, unable to respond to Musk’s taunts and struggling to make his mark on a company suffering declining business performance and plunging morale. “Parag’s been pretty ineffective the whole time,” one former close colleague says, adding: “I don’t fault him. I don’t see how he could have been effective in that situation.”

For anyone hoping that Agrawal’s ascension to the top job last November would help Twitter finally shake off its patchy business record and reputation for sluggish product development, this is dispiriting. He was handpicked by outgoing CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey as “almost a roving prodigy, who moved from difficult problem to difficult problem”, says one former staffer.

An Indian computer scientist who moved from Mumbai to the US in 2005 to pursue a PhD at Stanford University, Agrawal joined Twitter 11 years ago. People who know him are complimentary about his strong technical credentials, though some question his lack of operations experience. He broke Silicon Valley norms by taking paternity leave as CEO when his second child was born, and had barely returned to work when the Musk approach took place.

Jennifer Widom, Agrawal’s thesis adviser at Stanford, says that while he excelled on the theoretical side and at coding, she was “a little bit surprised” when he was named chief executive: “I did think of him as a very technical, no-nonsense person. A CEO has to deal with nonsense.” Contemplating the negotiations he has had to manage, she adds: “My main emotion for him is pity.”

If there was a brief opportunity for Agrawal to seize the initiative on Wall Street before Musk showed up on the scene, he failed to take it. “If he had taken more time to engage in the early days, he would have been in a better position. But it’s not his personality,” says one former executive. Agrawal’s low public profile also left him at a disadvantage when it came to the demands of running one of the world’s leading social networks. While Dorsey loved to hobnob with celebrities and pontificate about Twitter’s role in society, Agrawal barely tweeted before becoming CEO.

Agrawal is described as steady and deliberative by people who know him, and in person has an imposing directness. But, less adept at projecting himself through social media, he was ill-placed to handle one of the internet’s biggest loudmouths. It was left to Musk to posture as the defender of the free speech ideals that had long been at the heart of Twitter’s mission, further antagonising employees.

In text messages made public as part of the pre-trial discovery, Musk initially appeared to bond with Agrawal over a love of deeply technical engineering work. But after a phone call between the two brokered by Dorsey, his verdict was damning: “Parag is just moving far too slowly and trying to please people who will not be happy no matter what he does.” The tension spilled into hostility. In one terse exchange, Agrawal complained about a Musk tweet asking “Is Twitter dying”. “What did you get done this week?” Musk shot back.

Inside Twitter, the new chief became the target for workers who felt the sale was against their interests. But others say his arms were tied. “Unfortunately, Parag’s first loyalty was to shareholders,” says Daisley.

Those shareholders, at least, will have thanked him this week. But with someone as unpredictable as Musk, there is no knowing what might come next.

hannah.murphy@ft.com, richard.waters@ft.com