Less than two months into his $44 billion buy of Twitter, Elon Musk declared that whoever took over as the corporate’s CEO “ must like pain a lot.” Then he promised he’d step down as quickly as he discovered a substitute “silly sufficient” to need the job.
That particular person, Musk introduced Friday, is Linda Yaccarino, a highly-regarded promoting government from NBCUniversal. She’ll begin in six weeks. How lengthy she’ll final would possibly depend upon her ache tolerance.
When Musk tweeted on Thursday that he’s discovered a brand new CEO however didn’t say who, one phrase caught out: “she.” A few of his extra excessive Twitter followers took fast problem with the brand new CEO’s gender, however the truth that Musk employed a lady is definitely notable just because it’s so uncommon — in enterprise total and particularly within the tech trade — to see feminine chief executives.
Her appointment renewed questions concerning the “glass cliff,” a idea that girls — in addition to underrepresented minorities — usually tend to be employed for management jobs when there’s a disaster, which units them up for failure. The time period was coined in 2005 by College of Exeter professors Michelle Ryan and Alex Haslam, and there have been loads of well-known examples since then, from Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer to the U.Ok.’s Theresa Might.
Might Yaccarino be headed towards it?
“Her credentials are impeccable and she or he’s been extraordinarily profitable up to now. However she’s additionally been in settings the place her success was achievable,” stated Jo-Ellen Pozner, a enterprise professor at Santa Clara College who research company governance. “I imply no disrespect to her or to decrease her within the least. I simply assume that that is an not possible scenario for principally anyone.”
Whether or not or not she succeeds relies upon partially on how a lot Musk is keen to step again from Twitter’s day-to-day operations. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO stated he’ll proceed to function Twitter’s government chairman — Yaccarino’s boss — in addition to its chief know-how officer, reporting to her. He added that Yaccarino “will focus totally on enterprise operations.”
From the second Yaccarino’s identify was confirmed, promoting trade consultants hailed the choice as a superb one — maybe the one one — to steer Twitter towards stability and profitability. Yaccarino oversaw NBCUniversal’s market technique and promoting income for its broadcast, cable and digital belongings, which totaled almost $10 billion. Compared, Twitter’s last quarterly income as a public firm, reported in July, was simply $1.17 billion.
“She is strictly what Twitter wants to begin rebuilding advertiser belief, deliver again huge advertisers and actually begin enhancing Twitter’s advert enterprise,” stated Jasmine Enberg, an analyst at Insider Intelligence who follows Twitter. “That stated, there are nonetheless quite a lot of challenges and Yaccarino goes to have her palms full from day one.”
Musk’s tenure at Twitter’s helm has been chaotic at greatest. He started his first day firing the corporate’s high executives, adopted by roughly 80% of its employees. This has meant that Twitter has far fewer engineers to make sure that the positioning is working easily and much fewer content material moderators to assist rid it of hate speech, animal cruelty and graphic violence.
He’s upended the platform’s verification system and has scaled again safeguards in opposition to the unfold of misinformation. It’s been a few of these modifications — together with Musk’s personal penchant for spreading misinformation and fascinating with outstanding conspiracy theorists and far-right figures — that analysts say soured many advertisers on the platform.
“Elon Musk has been telling us for months repeatedly that Twitter’s issues are the results of advertisers pulling away. However that’s not the supply of his issues. Advertisers pulling away are a symptom of the issues at Twitter. He’s created chaos. He’s eradicated inside controls. He’s eradicated crucial features like content material moderation. He’s made the person expertise very unpredictable. He’s allowed harmful voices to flourish,” Pozner stated. “No one — man, girl, alien — goes to have the ability to proper this ship given these circumstances.”
The glass cliff idea holds up in enterprise in addition to politics, and, in response to a 2011 Harvard Enterprise Assessment report, “doesn’t appear to use to organizations with a historical past of feminine leaders.”
Twitter, like most tech corporations, doesn’t have a robust historical past of feminine leaders. Its founders had been all males, as had been all 5 of its CEOs, together with Musk. Whereas feminine chief executives are uncommon throughout industries, they’re exceptionally uncommon in tech. Of the 340 CEOs in a current survey of S&P 500 corporations, 18 had been girls, up from 16 in 2020. In tech, outstanding feminine CEOs embody Oracle’s Safra Catz and chipmaker AMD’s Lisa Su.
Yaccarino appears able to go head-to-head with Musk, although it’s not clear how that’ll play out. In a current on-stage interview with him, she requested Musk if he might decide to not tweeting after 3 a.m. Agreeing that he’s “gotten myself in hassle a number of instances” with late night time/early morning tweets, he responded with a noncommittal “I’ll aspire to tweet much less at 3 a.m.”
She additionally requested Musk if he’s open to let advertisers “affect” his imaginative and prescient for Twitter, in “product improvement, advert security, content material moderation” so they might get extra enthusiastic about investing within the platform.
Musk shortly shut her down.
“It’s completely cool to say that you simply need to have your promoting seem in sure locations in Twitter and never in different places, however it’s not cool to to attempt to say what Twitter will do,” he stated. “And if which means shedding promoting {dollars}, we lose it. However freedom of speech is paramount.”
Regaining advertisers’ belief would require stabilizing Twitter and guaranteeing that key product selections are made thoughtfully and intentionally and never, as Musk has usually been recognized to do, on the spur of the second, impressed by a fan’s tweet or a passing thought. Business insiders describe Yaccarino as extraordinarily succesful, with a confirmed observe document and spectacular resume.
But when she’s to succeed on the enterprise aspect, she’ll want Musk’s buy-in on the product aspect.
“It’s actually debatable whether or not or not he’s going at hand the reins over solely to Yaccarino,” Enberg stated “And quite a lot of Twitter’s success from right here on out actually will depend on what he decides when it comes to that.”
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