5 ms·

Parag used to be CTO and seems to have presided over multiple years of lethargic development and glacial product evolution. What did Jack see in Parag as a lea

by 0xy 4y ago

Parag used to be CTO and seems to have presided over multiple years of lethargic development and glacial product evolution. What did Jack see in Parag as a leader, exactly? How do these people continue to fail upwards?

Avicebron 4y ago
Peter principle I would imagine
lotsofpulp 4y ago
Whatever combination of luck and intent there was, it ended up with a great result for Twitter’s shareholders.
- rippercushions 4y ago
  So far. It's entirely possible that Musk ends up running Twitter into the ground.
  - refurb 4y ago
    It's private now, all current shareholders were bought out in cash. So lotsofpulp makes a good point. The prior leadership may have done a crappy job, but if you're a shareholder, you likely got bought out at the peak of value. No doubt they are happy. So maybe Parag was a great hire?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
mschuster91 4y ago
Don't get why you're downvoted - your point is more than valid IMO. A shitty redesign, the DM panel lags massively on Android since a month or so, still no edit for the masses, no way to re-stitch threads, all some people got was a "hot take" label and the "circles" feature no one knows what it's for other than the ability to share lewds with just a selected bunch of followers.
- qeternity 4y ago
  So glad I’m not the only one whose DM panel is borderline nonfunctional. Mine randomly scrolls around to, hugely annoying. I appreciate running things at scale requires a lot of effort but ffs the product couldn’t be simpler, and yet half the time it feels like someone’s weekend hackathon project.
- mynameisvlad 4y ago
  As mentioned in another comment, these all sound like product issues, not technology issues. The only one which might cross into a CTO's responsibilities might be the DM lag, depending on the reason. Everything else seems to be almost entirely a product issue that'd be the responsibility of Keith Coleman, the VP of Product.
  - mbStavola 4y ago
    I guess it also depends on the shape of the org chart. At the time Parag was CTO, did the VP of product report to him? If so, then you can absolutely make the claim that Parag is ultimately responsible here.
    - mynameisvlad 4y ago
      That's fair, I'm honestly not 100% sure what their org structure looks like and couldn't find it on a quick search. If Parag was CTO at the time and the VP Product reports to the CTO, then it would ultimately fall on him.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    The technology behind Twitter, aka how to distribute messages in real-time no matter if it's someone barely a dozen people follow or someone like Trxmp with hundreds of millions of followers, has been long solved. That is the secret sauce of Twitter (in addition to network effects). Everything else is plainly a matter of presentation/product whatever you wanna call it. And Twitter has been going downhill there for a looooong fucking time.
threeseed 4y ago
> presided over multiple years of lethargic development and glacial product evolution VP, Product is responsible for this not the CTO. And given Parag's masterful display in forcing Musk to over-pay for Twitter it's obvious to me why he was chosen.
- moralestapia 4y ago
  >And given Parag's masterful display in forcing Musk ... Oh boy, here we go ... That's not even remotely true. Musk got into this trouble because of his immature antics (no source needed), then he was "over-paying" because the stock fell weeks after his offer without expectation (markets moved or whatever), finally the deal closed because Delaware courts don't fool around. Parag was circumstantial to all of this, it could've been anyone, really, it could've been a rock with eyes and the outcome would've been the same.
  - Macha 4y ago
    Is this not part of the problem with evaluating senior management in general? Short of performing a drastic shakeup with drastic changes in fortunes as a result (i.e. Jobs returning to apple), you can always argue that the org would have got there anyway
  - threeseed 4y ago
    > Parag was circumstantial to all of this That's an interesting concept. The Twitter CEO not being at the centre of a takeover deal. And in hindsight it all looks simple and clean but at many points it wasn't necessarily obvious that forcing Musk to acquire Twitter through legal means was going to pay off.
  - nprateem 4y ago
    And had he not done it (or at least tried to force the sale), he'd have failed in his fiduciary duty to the shareholders and maybe they'd have sued or sacked him.
jongjong 4y ago
In his defense, I guess there wasn't much to do. The same can be said about pretty much any monopolistic corporation; the money will keep coming in regardless. It's better to sit back and do nothing than add complexity and risk compromising the monopoly position.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  > The same can be said about pretty much any monopolistic corporation; the money will keep coming in regardless. This cannot describe Twitter. For one, money was going out, not coming in: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TWTR/twitter/net-income https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TWTR/twitter/net-i...
  - jongjong 4y ago
    It used its monopoly on user attention to keep the investor money pouring in.
onion2k 4y ago
Parag used to be CTO and seems to have presided over multiple years of lethargic development and glacial product evolution. A lack of fancy new features in the frontend UI doesn't mean very much about the development and product evolution as a whole. Contrary to popular belief, Twitter is not just the user frontend. There's a ton of other systems shuffling data around behind the scenes - advertising account management, adverts themselves, timeline 'AI' for inserting stuff into people's views, anti-spam, anti-fraud, site reliability, apps... I imagine you'd need to be quite high up in Twitter to really get a sense of how quickly things are moving, and as outsiders you and I have absolutely no chance of getting any sort of insight from looking at the website.

by 0xy 4y ago

Avicebron 4y ago

Peter principle I would imagine

lotsofpulp 4y ago

Whatever combination of luck and intent there was, it ended up with a great result for Twitter’s shareholders.

rippercushions 4y ago
So far. It's entirely possible that Musk ends up running Twitter into the ground.
- refurb 4y ago
  It's private now, all current shareholders were bought out in cash. So lotsofpulp makes a good point. The prior leadership may have done a crappy job, but if you're a shareholder, you likely got bought out at the peak of value. No doubt they are happy. So maybe Parag was a great hire?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

mschuster91 4y ago

Don't get why you're downvoted - your point is more than valid IMO. A shitty redesign, the DM panel lags massively on Android since a month or so, still no edit for the masses, no way to re-stitch threads, all some people got was a "hot take" label and the "circles" feature no one knows what it's for other than the ability to share lewds with just a selected bunch of followers.

qeternity 4y ago
So glad I’m not the only one whose DM panel is borderline nonfunctional. Mine randomly scrolls around to, hugely annoying. I appreciate running things at scale requires a lot of effort but ffs the product couldn’t be simpler, and yet half the time it feels like someone’s weekend hackathon project.
mynameisvlad 4y ago
As mentioned in another comment, these all sound like product issues, not technology issues. The only one which might cross into a CTO's responsibilities might be the DM lag, depending on the reason. Everything else seems to be almost entirely a product issue that'd be the responsibility of Keith Coleman, the VP of Product.
- mbStavola 4y ago
  I guess it also depends on the shape of the org chart. At the time Parag was CTO, did the VP of product report to him? If so, then you can absolutely make the claim that Parag is ultimately responsible here.
  - mynameisvlad 4y ago
    That's fair, I'm honestly not 100% sure what their org structure looks like and couldn't find it on a quick search. If Parag was CTO at the time and the VP Product reports to the CTO, then it would ultimately fall on him.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  The technology behind Twitter, aka how to distribute messages in real-time no matter if it's someone barely a dozen people follow or someone like Trxmp with hundreds of millions of followers, has been long solved. That is the secret sauce of Twitter (in addition to network effects). Everything else is plainly a matter of presentation/product whatever you wanna call it. And Twitter has been going downhill there for a looooong fucking time.

threeseed 4y ago

> presided over multiple years of lethargic development and glacial product evolution VP, Product is responsible for this not the CTO. And given Parag's masterful display in forcing Musk to over-pay for Twitter it's obvious to me why he was chosen.

moralestapia 4y ago
>And given Parag's masterful display in forcing Musk ... Oh boy, here we go ... That's not even remotely true. Musk got into this trouble because of his immature antics (no source needed), then he was "over-paying" because the stock fell weeks after his offer without expectation (markets moved or whatever), finally the deal closed because Delaware courts don't fool around. Parag was circumstantial to all of this, it could've been anyone, really, it could've been a rock with eyes and the outcome would've been the same.
- Macha 4y ago
  Is this not part of the problem with evaluating senior management in general? Short of performing a drastic shakeup with drastic changes in fortunes as a result (i.e. Jobs returning to apple), you can always argue that the org would have got there anyway
- threeseed 4y ago
  > Parag was circumstantial to all of this That's an interesting concept. The Twitter CEO not being at the centre of a takeover deal. And in hindsight it all looks simple and clean but at many points it wasn't necessarily obvious that forcing Musk to acquire Twitter through legal means was going to pay off.
- nprateem 4y ago
  And had he not done it (or at least tried to force the sale), he'd have failed in his fiduciary duty to the shareholders and maybe they'd have sued or sacked him.

jongjong 4y ago

In his defense, I guess there wasn't much to do. The same can be said about pretty much any monopolistic corporation; the money will keep coming in regardless. It's better to sit back and do nothing than add complexity and risk compromising the monopoly position.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
> The same can be said about pretty much any monopolistic corporation; the money will keep coming in regardless. This cannot describe Twitter. For one, money was going out, not coming in: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TWTR/twitter/net-income https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TWTR/twitter/net-i...
- jongjong 4y ago
  It used its monopoly on user attention to keep the investor money pouring in.

onion2k 4y ago

Parag used to be CTO and seems to have presided over multiple years of lethargic development and glacial product evolution. A lack of fancy new features in the frontend UI doesn't mean very much about the development and product evolution as a whole. Contrary to popular belief, Twitter is not just the user frontend. There's a ton of other systems shuffling data around behind the scenes - advertising account management, adverts themselves, timeline 'AI' for inserting stuff into people's views, anti-spam, anti-fraud, site reliability, apps... I imagine you'd need to be quite high up in Twitter to really get a sense of how quickly things are moving, and as outsiders you and I have absolutely no chance of getting any sort of insight from looking at the website.