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Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal on whistleblower story
- gizmo 4y agoThis response is nothing more than a smear towards Mudge, backed up with exactly nothing. Content free CEO-speak like this only makes Mudge's whistleblower statements more credible, not less.
- cryptos 4y agoIt is somewhat funny that the Twitter CEO uses a picture to circumvent the character count limit of his own service.
- marcinzm 4y agoThat Tweet was not posted by the Twitter CEO.
- lapcat 4y agoCorrect. OTOH he has done it before: https://twitter.com/paraga/status/1513354622466867201 https://twitter.com/paraga/status/1513354622466867201
- whywhywhywhy 4y agoAlt text can bypass the character limit? Surprised I've not seen people take advantage of that.
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- afavour 4y agoThat's a screenshot of an email.
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- georgia_peach 4y agoFor those who don't know who "Mudge" is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peiter_Zatko https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peiter_Zatko
- shaneos 4y agoGiven Mudge's stellar professional history, and having worked near (not with) him for a short while, I certainly would take his word over the current Twitter leadership.
- Dma54rhs 4y agoYeah given Mudge's status I take his word any time instead of someone from Silicon Valley CEO/VC world.
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- andrewingram 4y agoIt feels very unusual for a CEO to comment on the circumstances of an exec's departure like this. It's hard to take away a message that isn't "we're trying to discredit this man" - which is a logical objective, but it feels far more transparent than what I have come to expert.
- remus 4y ago> It feels very unusual for a CEO to comment on the circumstances of an exec's departure like this. It's unusual circumstances. Im sure if there wasn't a huge newspiece in CNN Parag/twitter would have said exactly nothing.
- hedora 4y ago
- hedora 4y ago(The points on this are bouncing around, so I'm guessing some people are missing the joke. It's directed at the email, not HN commentors.)
- effingwewt 4y agoUntil you explaied it there was no joke at all just a cut/paste of HN rules with a face at the end. Now- with your added context, I get you. Having said that, there were already quite a few comments about the ad hominem and how bad the email is in general.
- awestroke 4y agoDidn't mudge whistleblow this months ago? Lots of inaccuracies in this memo
- arkitaip 4y agoTo imply that Mudge was responsible for Twitter's poor security practices when he only worked at the company for the past two years makes me believe that the allegations are true and the leadership is absolute shit. Also, implying that the dude who worked at DARPA and, maybe even more impressive, who was part of L0pht is incompetent is ludicrous.
- dylan604 4y agoI've seen some genuinely very smart people unable to perform at their level because of the baggage holding them back in the current environment. To those unwilling to admit the baggage, I could see how it would come across as incompetent especially when it would be advantageous to the employer. These managment types that refuse to see that core components are just bad/wrong so that the right thing is to scrap and replace. However, that is always seen as expensive and very disruptive. So if you can't come up with a way to change the tire while the car is running 65mph down the highway, then you're not able to do your job as hired. Therefore, incompetent. QED /s
- eis 4y agoOn the one hand we have a legend with impressive track record that is trying to bring to light serious issues at a large company and he has not much to gain but a lot to lose by making false accusations. On the other hand we have the Twitter CEO who does not have any comparable track record and has all to gain by trying to deflect and a lot to lose by admiting that the company under him has serious issues. He does have some "interesting" things he said on the record though. Twitter also has a track record of severe security issues. Twitter IMHO is not as evil as for example Facebook is but I do feel they are pretty stagnant and don't seem to get a lot done. They are only in the news because of some controversies it feels like. I think Mr. Agrawals days as Twitter CEO are counted. If Musk ends up buying Twitter he'll surely fire him. And if the deal does not go through then I'm sure the board will have to think hard if the performance was good enough. PS: I think it reflects poorly on him to mention alleged "ineffective leadership and poor performance" on Mudge's part in the email to all employees. Crap like that is probably the reason why Mudge is now hitting back. He is someone that seems to value honor and doesn't take shit from others.
- last_responder 4y agoI thought the Musk / Twitter deal was DOA a long time ago.
- ericbarrett 4y agoIt's in limbo—trial starts October 17.
- edmundsauto 4y agoIt’s going to trial this fall. Twitter is going to ask courts to enforce the agreement, making Musk buy them. My guess is he’s blustering to shore up his negotiating position, and will have to make Twitter whole in the range of $10b. Or he believes his own tweets, will go to trial, and be forced to make the purchase. Like everyone, I’m bad at predicting the future.
- spuz 4y ago
- DiggyJohnson 4y agoOpening with those causes of termination of the whistleblower was a very unconvincing way to start this memo.
- nkotov 4y ago> who was terminated in January 2022 for ineffective leadership and poor performance. Gotta love how Parag goes straight to attempting to discredit the person instead of focusing first on the claims.
- googlryas 4y agoYes, especially how in the announcements where he was no longer with the company, they said they couldn't elaborate due to "employment and privacy concerns". But now that he makes an allegation against them, they don't need to worry about privacy?
- maxk42 4y agoIs a CEO publicly accusing someone publicly of "ineffective leadership and poor performance" a libelous statement?
- bombcar 4y agoI'm sure there's lawyers somewhere willing to take the case, perhaps even pro bono, just for the publicity. Discovery would be hilarious.
- dsr_ 4y agoIf it's not true, it is libel or slander depending on how it was delivered. It may be that Twitter's HR records say "fired for cause: ineffective leadership and poor performance" in which case the statement would be technically true. It's much more likely that Twitter's HR records say something like "fired, not a good fit" in which case it's back to reputational harm.
- hedora 4y agoIf the HR records say that, and it’s not true, that doesn’t get twitter off the hook. It might make it harder to sue the CEO directly though, depending on who was involved in writing the HR record.
- Terretta 4y agoIt’s 100% true though: He was ineffective at keeping quiet about security problems to governance parties, and performed poorly at persuading peers not reporting to him to fix things they weren’t incentivized on.
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- weeblewobble 4y agoProbably not, because it's an opinion.
- system16 4y ago>... a former Twitter executive who was terminated in January 2022 for ineffective leadership and poor performance. Coming right out of the gates with an ad-hominem attack like this is extremely unprofessional and also reckless.
- _fat_santa 4y agoI have to side with Mudge here. If there were actual factual inaccuracies, Parag would have outlined them. The blanket discrediting of Mudge here only helps discredit himself.
- brk 4y agoNice way to lead with a direct attack on a former executive, and one who is very highly regarded in the broader computer/network/hacker sphere. The whole second paragraph is just useless fluff. The "important work" they are doing, with no references at all to any specifics, it's just a feel-good word jumble. He also does not make any claims that Mudge's accusations are patently wrong, it's couched in "what we've seen so far" and derided for lacking "important context". This missive from the CEO reads as rushed, ill-informed, and overly emotional. Which could lead many to assume the accusations by Mudge are more accurate than not, with or without the important "context".
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> reads as rushed, ill-informed, and overly emotional Agreed. Bad email. Zero specifics. Not even an apology for letting the situation get to this point. Just empty promises and mud slinging. (Also, formatting? Also, an email? You know what your product is, right? Did you think this wouldn’t get leaked?)
- ElijahLynn 4y agoYeah, as soon as I read the attack "poor performance" I instantly had distrust come up. It felt like a Trump-style attack. And then I thought of all the pressure that would put on employees reading the message too, let go for "poor performance". What if someone previously performed well and then was having some mental health issues and their performance was poor. Are they all of the sudden going to be let go now too? That doesn't make people feel secure in order to do high-level brain work, it does the opposite. It didn't feel like a message a good leader would send.
- zuminator 4y agoNothing really to see here. At the very minimum one would expect the CEO to express confidence in his current team as well as to disavow any accusations that could expose the company to potential liability.
- potamic 4y agoAbsolutely zero reason to say "who was terminated for ineffective leadership and poor performance". That context is not at all relevant to this matter and comes off as an attempt to distract from the subject in matter. And it doesn't bode well for employees to see their CEO mud slinging at former employees like that. You could be next! Besides, surely they know such messages eventually reach the public eye and give people a view into the culture in the company?
- bombcar 4y agoFrom what I'm hearing, those who can leave Twitter are leaving twitter.
- capableweb 4y agoWhat do you mean "those who can"? Everyone works there because they want to, no other reasons. If you work at Twitter and don't want to anymore, it's trivial to leave, and you won't struggle to find a new position elsewhere. It's not like Facebook where your work history is already a bit tarnished by not having left it already.
- mc32 4y agoDoesn't HR usually filter messages so as to leave no meat for any possible wrongful termination litigation or libelous tort?
- mikeyouse 4y ago
- na85 4y agoLots of people are rushing to defend Mudge, and maybe it's warranted, but being an alumnus of cDc and l0pht doesn't make one a competent executive. It is possible for someone to be a great hacker but a mediocre manager. Twitter's taken a lot of body blows recently and Parag is obviously trying to motivate his people. He's not necessarily lying even if it's a rather unprofessional way to speak I'll of someone who's been fired.
- alksjdalkj 4y ago> Lots of people are rushing to defend Mudge, and maybe it's warranted, but being an alumnus of cDc and l0pht doesn't make one a competent executive. He was also a DARPA PM, which definitely requires management/executive skills.
- na85 4y ago>He was also a DARPA PM, which definitely requires management/executive skills. Meh. I've worked in government and disagree with this assessment.
- rasz 4y agoHe might not have gotten the memo CIO role is about signing contracts with paper compliance vendors instead of actually securing shit.
- morelisp 4y agoBetween Mudge, Dildog, Beto O'Rourke, Wysopal, and I'm sure others, cDc/l0pht actually seems to have been an amazingly good breeding ground for competent executives compared to most dev teams.
- mruniverse 4y agoIt speaks to Parag's character that he's "trying to motivate his people" by doing it in such an unprofessional way. As far as the "great hacker but a mediocre manager" thing, same can be said of Parag... "good CTO but mediocre CEO".
- stuckinhell 4y agoTwitter has a lot of drama these days. It's honestly quite off-putting. I've been evaluating alternatives to it, but I haven't found one with a nice technology focused subculture. I want to be able to follow and chat about databases, tech tips, funny anecdotes about tech, and etc.
- legohead 4y ago> "given Mudge was accountable for many aspects of this work that he is now inaccurately portraying" Is he not shooting himself in the foot here? This makes it look more like they got rid of him for trying to do his job accurately and was annoying everyone with all of these "security problems."
- pjs_ 4y agoThis person seems to be pretty far out of their depth TBH. Writing emails like this genuinely is difficult and you are optimizing for a very diverse set of stakeholders - not just engineers - but this is amateur hour. From a purely utilitarian perspective the cost/benefit of directly attacking Mudge obviously doesn't work out.
- morelisp 4y agoYeah, if this was really meant to placate a nervous team there's no reason to mention Mudge personally at all, it'll just make anyone who respects him extremely pissed off, and everyone else even more jumpy as the professionalism gloves are clearly off for any interaction about this.
- JustSomeNobody 4y agoI get the impression the Twitter CEO is a little out of his depth running a company like Twitter.
- dqpb 4y agoIt must be disheartening to Twitter engineers to know that their competence may result in Parag Agrawal stabbing them in the back.
- keepquestioning 4y agoIs it just me, or is it obvious the hyper-obsession of Twitter in the media is a function of its popularity amongst journalists and such?
- chrismarlow9 4y agoI think the unnecessary slam on Mudge will have the opposite impact of improving Twitters security situation, from both an offensive and defensive perspective.
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