The deal has been closed, according to multiple sources, giving Musk the mandate to clean the house among the executive ranks. The Tesla CEO previously criticized Gadde on his Twitter account, as she was involved in the decision to ban former President Donald Trump from the platform. He has also become entangled with Agrawal. Musk publicly tweeted poop emojis to the CEO, who took over from founder Jack Dorsey late last year. Privately it wasn’t much better either. The two exchanged text messages indicating an altercation, as evidenced by chat logs revealed in the legal battle between the billionaire and the social network.
It was rumored that Musk would say he wants to cut 75% of the Twitter staff, even though he then declined that statement — yet it isn’t reassuring for the remaining Twitter employees to strip four executives on a Thursday night. Even Twitter co-founder Biz Stone addressed the shakeup.
Twitter has seen quite a bit of shuffling from executives since Agrawal took over from Dorsey. Before serving as CEO, Agrawal was the company’s CTO – he first joined Twitter in 2011. But within weeks, two executives stepped back as part of Agrawal’s restructuring: Twitter’s Chief Design Officer Dantley Davis, who joined the company in 2019, and Head of Engineering Michael Montano, who joined in 2011. Shortly after, Twitter lost two more leaders, Chief Information Security Officer, Rinki Sethi, and Chief of Security, Peiter Zatko (Mudge). In May, Twitter GM of Consumer, Keyvon Beykpour, announced he would leave the company seven years after Agrawal asked him to resign. At the same time, Bruce FalckTwitter’s revenue product lead also left the company.
Twitter’s leadership will already look very different under Musk’s control, and this is just the very beginning.