As revealed in the upcoming biography of Elon Musk written by Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk had a detailed plan to fire then-Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and senior management a few hours early to avoid paying. amount of 0 million. The layoffs happened quickly but were meticulously planned by Musk in advance.
On October 28, 2022, when arriving at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, Musk immediately fired the platform’s leadership team at that time, including CEO Agrawal, Chief Administrative Officer, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, and legal advisor. Sean Edgett and lawyer Vijaya Gadde.
If following the correct procedure, Musk would have let the directors resign, but at the last minute, the plan changed, he terminated their rights at Twitter before the stock options at the company took effect.
The 200 million figure is much higher than about million, The Infomation reported last year.
According to Isaacson, Musk’s early dismissal was also a way of revenge because he believed that this leadership group had cheated and inflated the number of users who could make money on Twitter, causing him to pay 44 billion USD to “return the money.” Buy “social network”.
Isaacson said that Musk’s last-minute change of plans was bold, even cruel, but Musk considered it reasonable because he was convinced that Twitter’s leadership had deceived him.
Before taking over Twitter, Musk accused the social network of misrepresenting the number of users and tried to pull out of the deal. But because there was no concrete evidence and was sued by the company’s president at the time, Bret Taylor, he had to give in. Angered, Musk decided to target Agrawal.
As soon as the deal closed and the initial payment was transferred at 16:12 on October 28, 2022, Musk immediately ordered his assistant to send a letter to fire the Twitter CEO and three top deputies. Just 6 minutes later, the old management was escorted out of the building, losing access to corporate email.
Isaacson wrote, Agrawal had prepared a resignation letter, but because his Twitter email was cut, he did not have time to switch to Gmail to submit the application when he was fired.
Alex Spiro, Musk’s lawyer, later said that Agrawal tried to resign, but Musk was one step ahead.