Elon Musk finally finds 'someone foolish enough to take the job' of Twitter CEO Tesla investors have been huffing and puffing about how CEO Elon Musk is "too distracted" by his latest plaything for some time now, and it looks like a new Chief Twit has been found to throw under the Cybertruck. Musk made the announcement on Twitter that there was a new boss in town yesterday, saying "She will be starting in …
Ask them to be the new face of the disaster, then replace them when they fail at the impossible, or if they manage to make some headway, find an excuse to replace them for not having done the nearly impossible fast enough and stick another stooge in to take credit.
Leave it to EM to play every page of the corporate D-Bag playbook.
I discovered today that the tactic is called The Glass Cliff.
It is also a flawed/biased concept. For the claim to pass muster, one has to ignore all the men who get drafted in during times of crisis, while simultaneously ignoring all the women who rose to power in companies during some of their most dominant periods. Many successful tech companies are already very much ran by women.
Facebook, Google, Apple, YouTube, Microsoft, Reddit and Salesforce all have one or more female leaders deciding what happens. In some cases, they even helped found the businesses in the first place. The key difference is they often choose not to be a named figurehead, they usually don’t go bleating about individual successes nor do they turn their capitalist fervour into a competitive bloodsport, they just get on and do their jobs to the point where nobody (except other senior businesspeople) notices them.
In 1974 Britain only had electricity 3 days a week. In 1976, Britain was begging the IMF for a loan because the nation was bankrupt. In 1979, you have the winter of discontent with rubbish piling up rotting in the streets, and a vote of no confidence which brought down the Labour government and put Thatcher in as PM.
The country was both literally and figuratively bankrupt long before Thatcher was put in power.
As someone who lived through the 70s, its often massively exaggerated how bad things were *, though the frequent changes of govt & small majority / coalitions scenarios were unhelpful in establishing consistent and coherent policies (neither the Con or Lb administrations were really able to fully achieve their desired actions / policies) 3 day week was a Heath thing & arguably led to end of Heath govt, Winter of Discontent a Callaghan thing at the end of the 70's.). Arguably the winter of discontent was the unions shooting themselves in the foot, by fighting against the (more working class friendly) Labour government which was trying to restrict pay rises, they ushered in the massively working class unfriendly Thatcher government.
* At least in the 70s a working person on one wage could typically get a mortgage on a house - house prices were not unfeasibly many times larger than average blue collar wage as they are now.
Probably in some cases, but for many countries, there's not a lot of chances to put a scapegoat in power since there's an election in the way. Unlike a company, where a small group of people can name someone CEO in a couple days if they want to, if there's a general election, then you can't just decide who the winner will be. For this reason, Thatcher couldn't have been a perfect example because a lot of people voted for her, and she's likely not to have been an example at all, since picking a scapegoat during a general election would nearly always be harmful to the party. Before it comes up, the situation about Truss fits this much better but is likely also not an example. If Truss had been named without a general election because something bad had been set in motion and she was intended to take the blame, that would fit the pattern. As far as I understand it, this was not the case, she had to campaign for the position, and the problems leading to her resignation were created after her appointment, not before it.
It has been seen before, though, and it can frequently not involve gender at all. For example, if a military wants to start a coup and to have an excuse, one tactic they have used is to put in a leader who will make unpopular decisions, so they can spin the removal of that leader as their duty rather than a power grab. This is not always the case in coups, as often the military doesn't particularly care about being subtle and, if they have the power to name a leader, they may skip the scapegoat process. A related tactic is to try to convince the existing leader to make unpopular decisions rather than replacing them, which has happened more frequently.
People often come out with this sort of thing by spinal reflex because that's what they have been taught by somebody.
Hypothetically, imagine that you took over a government from the opposing party 3 years after the UK went begging to the IMF for a multi billion quid bailout and had uncollected rubbish rotting on the streets. You have dozens of massively loss making industries producing uncompetitive and generally faulty and short lived goods that people actively avoided buying in favour of foreign alternatives that actually worked.
What do you do? Reforming the companies had been tried continuously and had failed, and "Maggie" chose to privatise the lot, handing them a pile of cash to get them started and then let them sink or swim under their own management. I can't see what she could have done better, even with the benefit of hindsight.
And note that many companies she privatised actually went down under Labour under Blair because of the exchange rate being too high; ie Rover.
New CEO : responsible for Advertising strategy, the lifeblood of twitter.
Old CEO : Will continue to make decisions for Deveelopment, Software and Ops
I don't see any conflict there at all. Should be Smoooooooth sailing.
The key contract clause will be the vesting period of the stock options.
The key Twitter date will be start date + vesting period +1 day
She'll find selling ads on Twitter a lot harder than selling ads on NBC was, when they invite white supremacists like Tucker Carlson to their platform who advertisers already found impossibly toxic at Fox News - and he'll be worse now because he'll know "free speech maximalist" Musk will let him say literally anything. If it was just him advertisers could say "make sure my ads aren't on his stream" but he's just the tip of the iceberg, and Tucker being there will probably encourage others like him to take their podcasts and what not to Twitter.
I'm sure Musk will blame the CEO when the company collapses, even though he's the one making all the bonehead decisions that drive advertisers away.
Reading some of these comments, it sounds like the general opinion is that clever old Elon is leading this innocent little lamb to slaughter. Is that really likely?
I mean: one has to assume that she'll be making very good money -- it seems unlikely that a "hard-nosed negotiator" would be taking her entire salary in stock options. As for her future prospects... suppose Twitter goes down in flames, as seems likely. Nobody whose initials are not EM will blame her for the failure, and in her next job interview, it will be "Well, yeah, Twitter failed, but not because of me. It was... you know..." And if by some miracle Twitter survives and perhaps even morphs into X, she'll not only become very rich, but she'll be able to write her own ticket anywhere else that she chooses to go.
To me, it almost looks like a can't-lose scenario for her. She's not the desperate one here, and based on the (admittedly small amount of) information we have about her, it doesn't sound like she's a pushover. I don't think Twitter is likely to succeed long-term, but success or failure, as long as she acts with a bare minimum of integrity, I suspect she'll come out OK.
Yeah, I don't think she's innocent in this - she knows she's going to be his meat shield, but a) good money, b) good on the resume - once you've been CEO then no matter how badly you fail you can always get rehired as someone else's CEO, just look at Phil Harrison, c) everyone knows it was still Elmo's fault.
They both win from this (Elmo gets his meat shield).
Agreed. I think she figures this is a good career move even if Twitantic continues to sink, and I suspect she's right about that. CEOs are rarely held to account for the failure of their firms, this is a move further into the circles of the club, and coming in to try to rescue a disaster gives an exec some credibility (didn't just take the safe jobs) even when it fails.
I agree, and on the surface, she would be the perfect person to serve as the new CEO. Twitter's driven away a lot of advertisers and Musk got in fights with several of the remaining ones, and advertising is the way Twitter makes basically all of its money. The pay for unverified encryption and a check mark plan isn't going to make a dent. I think hiring someone with knowledge of the advertising industry and relationships with advertisers is likely going to extend Twitter's life by at least a couple months. If she had a lot of power, it would have the option of being longer, but Musk is the guy who has done all the stupid stuff for the past few months, so I see no reason to believe he's just going to stop. As such, although she has the opportunity, she should probably look at this as a speculative stepping stone, not a long-term deal.
I agree with the large majority of your reply, except for one point.
Twitter didn't drive away the clients, Politics did.....And this is the true lesson that must be remembered...
The current political situation is dangerous for all us, the division is steering people apart, politicians are jumping on the band wagon and pushing harder a situation which is already on tightrope....
I wish people would stop looking a the details and start looking at the bigger picture, ideologies have to start swinging back to the center... It's time the extremism, regardless of the side, starting re-pushing towards a softer vision, an actual acceptance of the other rather than the false ideologies actually being pushed.
Twitter is merely a Litmus test for things about to come.
As a non-user, I'm not sure that's the case. It's been popular to say that the reason advertisers have been leaving is just due to extremists forming a lot of the posts, and I'm sure that's a major factor. Another likely factor is that a lot of Twitter employees that interacted with advertisers, providing them support and someone to complain to, have been fired. That can't have helped either. Another reason is that advertisers were uncomfortable with the ease of impersonation enabled by the buy-your-verification system, back when users still saw the mark as indicative of something useful. Those latter two causes aren't political; they're the result of stupid management decisions and are specific to Twitter. I don't know which have been the largest factors making people change their advertising budgets, possibly because I tend to think that most advertising spending is wasted anyway.
"possibly because I tend to think that most advertising spending is wasted anyway."
Some advertising for really large companies is hard to quantify a return for and some might call it wasted. The cola wars are an example. Sites where large number of people congregate are splashed all over with Coke or Pepsi logos. If you want a fizzy drink, the stands are going to serve one of the two corresponding to all of the banners. I think this might be one of the reasons these places really like the digital signage. They can make deals with either one based on the event and just change the program that runs the displays. The idea is to saturate people with the company's trade dress to encourage a Pavlovian response. See a Coke logo, get thirsty for a Coke. Is that ad money wasted?
"The idea is to saturate people with the company's trade dress to encourage a Pavlovian response. See a Coke logo, get thirsty for a Coke. Is that ad money wasted?"
Does it work? Does it, for example, convince people to buy one brand when both are available, or to buy more than they otherwise would with an identical setup without the advertising? In my experience, when people want to drink something, they buy something to drink whether there's advertising about it or not. They've tried both products, decided whether they have a preference, and they need no more signs to alert them that these products exist. Someone would have to test whether there is any benefit from installing the advertising and whether that benefit exceeds the costs, but I would not assume they have necessarily done that; often the assumption is that it must be helping, so if one competitor is doing it, you need to as well.
This isn't always the case. If you were making a new drink that people didn't know about, then you might want to advertise so that people try it and may become customers. If it's a product that everyone knows about and, as in many cases, it's the only comparable product available there anyway, it might not be worth spending the money on advertising.
"In my experience,"
In the research done by proper behavioral scientists and psychologists employed by these big firms complete with white coats, metal rulers and drip feeds, other conclusions get made.
While Pepsi and Coke may never knock the other one off the wall, they do make just about everything else run way back in the pack. When I would buy fizzy drinks I got myself used to the store brands to save money. I can't say that any one was better than the other, only that they were different. Although, many of the store brands seemed to taste the same and I expect that they were the same thing in different packaging. Even with all of that, I still have the sense that I'm drawn to the name brands. It was the same thing with Kraft Mac n Cheese vs a store brand. These days I can make a cheese and pasta dish that smokes everything in a cardboard box by miles. I've also given up on buying fizzy drinks and stick with tea or lemonade. I've given the dentist and the grocer enough of my money over the years. A bladder busting container of iced tea is less than 10p made at home. Same goes for coffee and if I can get some lemon trees to grow around my house, I'll be freezing batches of concentrate for year round drinks.
Agreed. Although from a European perspective, the Dems are a fair bit right of centre and the Reps are so far over they're just a speck in the distance :-) It always makes us laugh when either "side" accuses the other of being "commies", "leftists" or "liberals" :-)
"It always makes us laugh when either "side" accuses the other of being "commies", "leftists" or "liberals" :-)"
It amuses me when somebody calls somebody a commie and their comment shows they have no idea what it means. The term "Nazi" gets used often, again with the user having no clue only that they see it as a serious insult.
"Most Republican politicians publicly espouse at least some positions broadly consistent with "liberal" in its technical sense."
I'd give myself a conservative label (not Republican), but I can be very liberal on some subjects. Blindly following one side or the other in lock step is what frightens me in some people. At some point they might wind up snapping and become a Green. Scary.
Pre-Musk, Twitter had sufficient high spending advertisers to break even, and even make a modest profit in two quarters. They did this by avoiding blatantly taking sides. When there was an issue big enough to drive away advertising they changed their policy so they could ban or block accounts or Tweets as required and say they were just following the policy and argue that they were doing so as evenhanded as practical. I am not saying Twitter didn't pick a side, only that they took the minimal actions required to avoid being blatant about it in the eyes of the advertisers.
Musk's first actions were to re-instate and unblock accounts that were problematic to advertisers then fire most of the moderation team. The accounts he unblocked and unbanned showed he had picked a side. He got into arguments with people who called him out on using his control of Twitter to boost one side and silence the other. He has stopped paying bills - an action that causes seething hatred from people who have been on the receiving end of that behaviour. He has started modifying Twitter policy but it is clear that the policy changes are retribution against people who say things he does not like and the policy changes are applied selectively.
Other people could and did demonstrate the ability to shut up an not make their biases obvious. That is clearly not compatible with Musk's personality. He has free speech so he can and does say (almost) whatever he wants. He owns Twitter so he can boost or silence accounts as he chooses. Those choices come with consequences. One consequence is many people threatening to not buy products advertised on Twitter. The next is companies not advertising on Twitter. Twitter has got into trouble before because of their minimal moderation policy. Pre-Musk, they got out of court cheaply by promising to do a better job and supplying evidence regularly that they are making a real and effective effort. I doubt sufficient people remain at Twitter to collect the required evidence let alone actually do the work. Legal consequences are bearing down on him at the speed of a glacier because he believes his lawyers can talk him out of anything (except overpaying $44B for Twitter).
"The accounts he unblocked and unbanned showed he had picked a side."
Yes, for a "free speech absolutist", it was interesting that it was almost exclusively far right extremists who were re-instated and very few, if any, far left extremists. Neither should have been reinstated, but it's clear his idea of "free speech absolutism" is warped in a specific direction such that it's neither "free" nor "absolutist"
The bias was never hidden. Twitter's stream was available to researchers and the bias documented. Twitter used to be able to claim it boosted RWNJs to generate engagement via outrage. Now it boosts RWNJs because that is the type comment Musk personally believes is most popular. The bias is now obscured by cutting researchers' access to the stream of tweets. In some countries that access was a legal requirement to demonstrate Twitter was making an effort to reduce distribution of tweets calling for violence.
Given a choice between heart disease and gout I choose exercise and a sensible diet.
"Pre-Musk, Twitter had sufficient high spending advertisers to break even, and even make a modest profit in two quarters"
Twitter also had the Silicon Valley disease. The located offices in the highest rent areas of the world they could find and showered the employees with many very expensive benefits such as sponsored IVF procedures. I'm sure a fair bit of money was spent on ESG and DIE offices as well as an HR department structured to hinder the company as much as possible.
Elon could have saved a bunch of money by finding new offices, curtailing some of the perks and only getting rid of departments that didn't contribute to the bottom line. Standard spending oversight wouldn't go amiss either. Making wi-fi unavailable in the cafeteria would mean that people getting meals there would only do so if they were hungry and not just looking for someplace other than their cubicle to sit for a while. I've seen photos before Elon closed the cafeteria down and everybody with very few exceptions were neck deep into their phones or tablets. Given the general squalor and street crime in SF and many major city centers, I'd opt to eat at the company cafeteria if it was halfway decent.
I neither know nor care if Twitter Version 1 had Silicon Valley Disease with all the over spending you describe - or more. For the sake of argument, lets assume you are completely right about that. They still made a modest profit despite SVD.
Musk did 'save' (in real life, delay spending) a bunch of money by not paying the rent. Finding cheaper offices now will be hampered by needing to supply a five year deposit in advance and cannot save money over the current spend of $0. Musk has trashed the incentive schemes and 'saved' by not paying out on Twitter's commitments to former staff (...yet - legal action in progress). Musk has butchered departments that did not contribute to short term profits (lack of regulatory compliance, lack of evidence of compliance and failure to abide by consent decrees are going to incur fines in due course). Despite all these expenditure delaying moves Musk had to sell some of his Tesla shares to service Twitter's debts. He will have to do so again when the next interest payment falls due.
Financial debt is not the only problem. Reputational damage means he can only trade on a cash in advance basis, with a surcharge on top to cover legal expenses. He has dragged staff in from Tesla because he cannot hire anyone with suitable experience through Twitter (there cannot be a huge number of Tesla programmers with experience with Twitter issues). I am amazed that Tesla investors have not already sent him a truck load of lawyers to explain there are consequences to spending Tesla resources on Twitter.
Musk wants Twitter to become a social/bank/amazon everything app. Even if he could hire the staff to implement all that, would you trust this man to hold your money? He has even spouted the classic Ponzi scheme mantra: leave your money with me because I pay higher interest than everyone else in the world!
"Twitter also had the Silicon Valley disease. "
With all of the downvotes, I think I need to define what I mean.
Plenty of tech companies believe that they have to locate in an area such as the Silicon Valley to be able to attract employees and managers. The other places they'll open offices is in large city centers where it's also incredibly expensive to be for some unfathomable reason. The classic reason for having a bank in the 'Financial' district or a jewelry business in the 'Diamond' district was the lack of good and inexpensive communications/transportation. These days communications across the world are taken for granted and one can get to any population center within a day or two for not all that much money and not even have to put up with a chicken in your lap if you don't want to. With an internet based business, it's even more possible to locate to just about anywhere. There are tens of thousands of miles of "dark" fiber in the US along interstate highways so towns and cities with plenty of amenities and a lower cost of living can host offices for many of these firms. I've had plenty of recruiters offer me jobs in tech centers and there's no way I'd even consider one. While I make less where I am, I also own my home and car outright and in a place like Mountain View, CA, I'd have very little chance of saving up a down payment for a home there to be allowed to spend 50% of my take home pay for a home to own me. The thinking that every person in tech wants to live in a very high cost of living area/dense downtown is what I call a disease. A couple of hours of driving and I too can experience the joy of paying Ticketmaster twice the face value of the concert ticket to see my favorite bands.
And he promises, absolutely promises, that he'll never in any circumstances interfere in her job in any way or overrule any of her decisions even if he disagrees with them.............................. Sure.
If she attempts to disinfect the sewer at all, I hope she realises just what sort of awful reaction Elon's incel fanbois are going to have. And finds out in advance whether Musk is going to react by saying "Sorry, that's just free speech, can't do anything".
"And he promises, absolutely promises, that he'll never in any circumstances interfere in her job in any way or overrule any of her decisions even if he disagrees with them.............................. Sure."
Maybe he will. He'll do his own thing and she'll just have to cope with whatever Elon is changing in software and ops which she won't have any say in.
She's just going to be his meat shield. He'll still be calling all the shots - he uses Twitter obsessively, and won't be able to resist because he has zero self-control. Anything he says to the contrary is an obvious eye-rolling lie.
Well, they both benefit from it, but anyone who thinks she's going to significantly change things has just not been watching Elmo for the last 10 years.
Seeing the totally unexpected (/s) bile generated from a post of Linda Yaccarino's CV with a huge highlight pointing to her position with the WEF it certainly looks like Elon has chosen someone who will - get a lot of reactions from the twitterati (and reactions means tweets means engagement metrics improve - ka-ching).
Maybe Elon wants to play the balance card? Look, this group say nasty things about me, but that group say nasty things about her, so Twitter provides a balanced representation of views now!
She is going to do well from this no matter what - just so long as she avoids reading her own Twitter feed without a heavy-duty muck filter in place, no need to take silly risks.
"(and reactions means tweets means engagement metrics improve - ka-ching)."
I don't see the "ka-ching". The continued existence isn't predicated on the activities of the users. Continued existence relies on whether advertisers are happy and buying ad spacetime. With all of the scams running ads on Youtube, the cost must be very cheap so it makes more sense for advertisers to buy time there.
I humbly beg to differ. LT caused the Bank of England to step in and blow £40 odd billion in short order to stabilise the markets, and that was not the end of it.
“moron risk premium” - MRP...
https://www.ft.com/content/08908266-cc47-4cda-b8d4-97a8ac433a6d
"She'd certainly be an effective means of making Twitter's remaining value vanish into thin air."
Maybe she would be a very good CEO for Twitter, but it's doubtful she'll be given enough control to implement the policies that would let her turn things around. Elon is still keeping a grip on the sorts of decisions that can do great damage and negate any good work done by the CEO.
I should have just resisted; I should have just checked the URL before tapping on it:
> Perhaps this person is the new chief? Or this one?
Not only have I had to reach for the mind bleach but, worse, I've BEEN TO TWITTER AGAIN! It is in my browser history.
Worse, I scrolled. Dear Heaven, help me, I scrolled! Why would I do that? What insanity from the stygian deep possessed me?
Just promise me that you'll not do the same and I'll suffer the madness knowing that, at least, it can serve as a warning to the world.
All cash, 100% up front deal for her, is the only thing that makes sense to me. $100M for up to 1 year of service. Nonrefundable. Maybe with a free ride to the ISS thrown in.
If she's as good as her reputation, that's the sort of deal she got.
Because she will be made a scapegoat and she knows it.
Valuable legal advice comes from your lawyer. IANAL. I am just another fool on the internet so taking legal advice from me would make you an even greater fool. There is actually a worse place to get your legal advice: Someone else's lawyer.
Presumably the 6 week delay is Linda Yaccarino negotiating her contract of employment with support from her legal team to ensure she has a completely blame proof heat shield.
"Given the typical remuneration package floating around at this level it wouldn't be so bad if the job only lasted a few months. Its not like she's on the clock or anything like that."
I think that many of us commenting here could retire comfortably on just what's likely to be her 'signing bonus'.
I don’t understand the level of anger and hatred towards musk over twitter here.
Is it just because Elon banned a MAPs (minor attracted person) advocate ? Or that’s he finally dealing the amount of CP on twitter ? Or that’s he’s not bending over for three letter acronym government agencies ?
The mask really has slipped guys
You ----------------->
I'm not going to bother looking up who that MAP is, although wasn't Epstein's pal Trump actually unbanned, and I'd rather do without CP searches in my history, but I'm sure I've previously read that CP have actually gone up - Musk may have banned common hash tags, but that's not tackling the core problem, and he sacked most of the moderation teams.
As for the TLAs, well, your boy Musk is actually bending over even further: https://cyber.harvard.edu/story/2023-04/twitter-complying-more-government-demands-under-elon-musk
He also recently insulted someone for asking why he censored Turkish government critics just before their general election: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/05/twitter-musk-censors-turkey-election-erdogan
You've not been around here long if you are making that statement....
There are many here that spend there time hating Musk for reasons that they can't actually justify other than to push their Ideology of the day. You'll get used to it... Always check which office the original article came from and you'll start to understand that El Reg UK and El Reg San Fran are two completely different entities.....
"Always check which office the original article came from and you'll start to understand that El Reg UK and El Reg San Fran are two completely different entities..."
I agree, so much. Since the Register is not a pure UK publication anymore, it feels exactly as polarised, opinionated and self-overrating in its quality as Ars Technica.
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/15/once-again-free-speech-absolutist-elon-musk-caves-to-authoritarian-censorial-bullies/ TBF no three letter acronyms involved......
@Trotts36
> Bitter, I don’t understand the level of anger and hatred towards musk over twitter here. Is it just because Elon banned a MAPs (minor attracted person) advocate ? Or that’s he finally dealing the amount of CP on twitter ? Or that’s he’s not bending over for three letter acronym government agencies ? The mask really has slipped guys
Agreed, Yes and voted up !!!
Hilarious watching all the blue tick buying antivaxxers on Twitter absolutely losing their shit over the weekend when they found out who Musk had appointed.
Comments like:
"She is in the pocket of the WEF!"
"If Musk has appointed her, maybe we shouldn't have put him on a pedestal!"
"Pro-mask, pro-vaxx, and a participant in The World Economic Forum. Under her Twitter, The #DiedSuddenly film would have never been allowed to see the light of day."
"Have faith - he seems like he knows what he’s doing. I don’t think he would allow anything to subvert the mission."
“Does Yaccarino, who by all accounts appears to be a very successful exec, really want multimedia 4chan on her CV?”
Why all the hostility directed at Musk by the MSM, since he acquired Twitter?
a. Because he took away your toy.
b. Twitter under Musk was not under the control of the state security apparatus.
"I don't know about you folks, but I came back to Twitter to watch the airship crash, and the algorithm has never seemed more violent, racist, crass, and entertaining."
What, oh what, has become of the old Register I used to love? I am no 'Musk fan', but likewise, I could not have imagined a 'journalistic comment' like this five years ago in El Reg, nor the thinly veiled hate of new vs the ironical UK satire of old.
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