Linda Yaccarino left her job operating advert gross sales for NBC to turn out to be the CEO of Twitter a couple of 12 months in the past. How’s it going?
On the one hand: Not good, in any respect. Twitter’s advert enterprise, which fell in half after Elon Musk purchased the corporate, continues to sputter. Person numbers do not appear like they’re rising, both.
Then again: She might be doing significantly better. It is simply that Musk, who renamed Twitter “X,” retains making her job onerous.
That is the argument that each The New York Occasions and The Wall Avenue Journal have introduced in the previous few days, by way of prolonged profiles produced by groups of reporters.
Here is the Occasions: “Mr. Musk is at all times one whim away from undoing her work. Ms. Yaccarino’s job of repairing and remaking X’s enterprise over the previous 12 months has been difficult by Mr. Musk’s seeming disregard for the promoting business and his fixed unraveling of her efforts.”
And the Journal: “Yaccarino retains operating into an issue: She does not at all times have the ultimate say,” which is “impeding some core initiatives, together with some funds efforts and restoring advert income.”
In case you are a conspiracist, you may argue that these items mirror an effort by Yaccarino, who used to get pleasure from fairly flattering press therapy when she was in advert gross sales, to salvage her popularity if she leaves Twitter.
An alternate argument: Yaccarino has been on the job for a 12 months. It is fairly customary to put in writing a profile of a CEO after they have been on the job for a 12 months.
Possibility C: Each issues will be true.
Each the Occasions and the Journal have good anecdotes to again up the Linda-does-one-thing, Elon-undoes-it premise. A few of them you positively find out about in case you pay any consideration in any respect to Twitter’s fortunes: Musk telling advertisers to go fuck themselves, or scuttling a video cope with former CNN anchor Don Lemon.
Some are extra behind the scenes. The Journal, as an example, reviews on a Yaccarino cope with Visa to assist Twitter construct a funds enterprise, which fell aside after executives who report back to Musk balked. The Occasions says Yaccarino tried to get Musk to un-cancel his cope with Lemon. (Twitter hasn’t responded to my request for remark.)
When you take essentially the most beneficiant studying of the tales, your conclusion could be: Man. What a tough job Linda Yaccarino has! It should be very onerous to work for Elon Musk.
And that might be true. However the factor that neither piece needs to totally say out loud is a straightforward one: All of this was fully predictable.
By the point Yaccarino agreed to take the Twitter job, Musk’s capricious monitor file as Twitter’s proprietor had been well-established. And even earlier than Musk purchased Twitter, it was fairly clear he had no precise plan for it — underlined by the truth that he spent a number of months making an attempt to not purchase it after signing a deal to purchase it.
And Yaccarino would have identified that as nicely, or higher, than anybody: In spite of everything, Musk basically introduced he had employed Yaccarino whereas she was nonetheless at NBC, days earlier than she was supposed to offer an important “upfront” gross sales pitch for NBC. That pressured her to bail on the presentation and her current job.
Then, after formally hiring Yaccarino, Musk made it clear that whereas her title can be chief government officer, she would not really be operating the corporate. As a result of whereas she’d be in control of its enterprise, he’d be overseeing all the firm’s product and tech work. Reminder: Twitter is a tech firm.
You possibly can nonetheless think about a bunch of causes Yaccarino took the job, even after she’d been pre-emptively undermined: Cash, ego, a uncommon likelihood to have get the CEO title at an enormous, well-known firm. Perhaps even a honest perception in Musk’s mission, and/or a bet-on-yourself ethos that instructed her that she can be the one to make it work with Musk.
However the truth that after a 12 months on the job, the erratic, hard-to-work-for man she went to work for stays erratic and onerous to work for? That should not be a shock.
