Elon Musk says ‘no one wants’ top Twitter job which is ‘in the fast lane to bankruptcy’, but some volunteer for the position
- About 58 per cent of Twitter users said Musk should step down following a poll on whether he should lead the social media company
- While the Financial Times suggested former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg could be a contender, Musk can also tap talent from Tesla and SpaceX
Elon Musk said there is no one willing and capable of running Twitter. But if he is good to his word and walks away from the top leadership position at the social media company he bought two months ago, a number of people are already raising their hands.
Musk polled his following on Sunday night asking if he should step down, and the answer early on Monday morning by about 58 per cent of respondents was yes.
The mercurial entrepreneur has been almost single-handedly running Twitter since he bought the company in October, having fired or accepted resignations from almost all of the top-rank executives in the past months. Musk said early on that he did not plan to stay on permanently as CEO and he has surrounded himself with a few trusted people, some of whom have suggested they would be ready to take on what he calls a thankless task.
“No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor,” Musk tweeted, adding “and it has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy since May.”
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Twitter users vote for Elon Musk to step down as platform’s CEO
In the early days of Musk’s takeover of Twitter, he created a War Room, or fix-it committee, to revamp Twitter that included Jason Calacanis, an investor and podcaster, and former PayPal Holdings executive David Sacks. Another Musk loyalist who has been present since the early days is Andreessen Horowitz partner Sriram Krishnan, also a former Twitter executive.
Calacanis ran his own Twitter poll asking whether people thought he or Sacks should run Twitter, or a combination of both of them. Sacks garnered 31 per cent of the vote, with 39 per cent going to “other”. Calacanis did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Musk did not respond to requests for comment on whether he was following through with honouring the outcome of the poll and who might replace him.
At the time Musk first moved in to Twitter’s headquarters on Market Street in San Francisco and began making wholesale changes to the company, people familiar with the situation said Sacks, Calacanis and Krishnan were given internal accounts, helped with identifying those deemed talented enough to stay on and were part of the initial pitch to advertisers in an effort to stem the flow of clients pulling ads. Calacanis and Sacks both have denied ever holding a formal role at the company.
As CEO of Tesla and Space Exploration Technologies, Musk could also tap talent at either of the other companies he helms. He has been known to shuffle staff among his businesses before and brought in executives from Tesla to Twitter to help with the transition. Omead Afsha– - previously the leader at Tesla’s Austin plan– - was moved to SpaceX to work on Musk’s ambitious Starship deep-space rocket, Bloomberg has reported.
And Tom Zhu, who joined Tesla in 2014 to help build its Supercharger network and most recently has been heading the carmaker’s Asia-Pacific operations, is back in Austin, Bloomberg has reported, with some of his engineering team from China with him to assist in overseeing the ramp up of Giga Texas, a US hub for the Model Y and future production of the Cybertruck.
Others have been volunteering but have gained little traction. Lex Fridman, a respected AI academic and research scientist at MIT and a fan of Musk offered himself up, but was given a dour response.
Musk replied: “You must like pain a lot. One catch: you have to invest your life savings in Twitter and it has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy since May. Still want the job?”
The Financial Times suggested that Sheryl Sandberg could fit the bill. The long-time chief operating officer at Facebook was credited as the driving force behind the boom and advertising prowess at the company, which has since been renamed Meta Platforms. If Sandberg does not want the job, the FT suggested Sarah Friar, who was formerly chief financial officer of payments company Square.
Musk has previously said he wants a ‘technologist’, someone with talents across software and servers to take on the role, given those areas are at the core of Twitter’s business.
In an exchange with Former T-Mobile US CEO John Legere about a month ago, Musk rejected Legere’s voluntary outreach with a terse “no”.
