Parag Agrawal joins a long list of Indian origin execs leading tech firms

Agrawal worked with Microsoft and Yahoo! before his stint with Twitter

Parag Agrawal, the new CEO of Twitter, joins many Indian-origin executives who have taken over the top jobs at large technology firms. From Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, to Satya Nadella at Microsoft; Arvind Krishna who heads IBM, to Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, the examples are many. 

When the news of Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and ex-CEO broke on Monday night, Twitter was instantly abuzz with people talking about Agrawal, and how little is known of him. 

Agrawal, an IIT-Bombay and Stanford University alumnus, joined Twitter ten years ago as a Distinguished Software Engineer, and was elevated to chief technology officer in 2017. 

He worked with Microsoft and Yahoo! before his stint with Twitter. 

One thing a lot of people pointed out on Twitter was how little Agrawal tweets himself, compared to Dorsey, who is much more vocal on the platform. 

“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 CRO is none deep,” said Dorsey in his email announcing his stepping down, which he tweeted. 

He was Twitter’s first Distinguished Engineer due to his work across revenue and consumer engineering, including his impact on the re-acceleration of audience growth in 2016 and 2017, Techcrunch reported.