TheQuartering [5/12/2023]
“Excited to announce that I’ve hired a new CEO for X/Twitter,” wrote Elon Musk today on the platform. He then dropped another bombshell — considering the frathouse that is tech’s top leadership — that the company’s new CEO would be a woman.
“She will be starting in ~6 weeks!” Musk announced, before addressing his own plans. “My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops.”
Musk said in December that he would step down as CEO as soon as he found someone “foolish enough to take the job.” He had also previewed that his role would transition to running software and servers at the company. The billionaire had promised to abide by the result of a Twitter poll in which he asked users if he should step down. More than 57% voted “yes.”
Musk’s Twitter announcement was also a tease, as it set off a guessing game of who the next CEO will be. It also generated some skepticism given that he has previously previewed decisions that were delayed or did not materialize.
When he closed his purchase of Twitter in October, after a turbulent process with the previous platform’s leadership, Musk fired staffers and invited back users who had previously been suspended. Most prominent was former President Donald Trump, who has yet to tweet and instead has stuck to his own platform, Truth Social.