Will Elon let her be more than a ‘CEO in Name Only?’ Also: takeaways from my interview with Mark Zuckerberg, layoffs hit Snap and Epic Games, and more.
The buzz out of the Code Conference this week is, naturally, all about the disastrous performance of X / Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino, who closed out the two-day affair in spectacular fashion. Vox’s Peter Kafka, who has been going to the conference since it started in 2008, called it “the weirdest session I’ve ever seen.” If I had to sum up the vibe as everyone trickled off to dinner afterward, it would be stunned disbelief. As for Yaccarino, she immediately fled the premises with her six-person security detail.
She is the Tom Wambsgans of the industry. If she dies eating shit for Elon, another billionaire will gladly resurrect her and offer her even more money to eat more shit because she did the job so well the first time.
Indeed, I have little respect for advertisers and I disagree with her politics. But I wouldn’t say I have no sympathy, and I offered a plausible explanation on why she might have taken the job.
I mean, you’re welcome to your own judgment regarding how much sympathy to have, but she chased the job knowing full well why the job needed to be filled, so I have no sympathy when she makes herself look like an idiot for Elon. She resigned from NBCUniversal the same day her Twitter position was announced. She didn’t actually need a new job, but she made a choice to take this one and all the bullshit that comes with it.
edit: it’s possible she did want a new job, but I’m certain she could have held out for something better than this.
Wasn’t sure I’d listen to this whole thing but half way threw it starts to really get weird. Damn, kind of feel bad for her…it most be hell working for Elon.
[2 mins 15 sec] Yaccarino: “I work at X, he worked at Twitter, X is a new company.”
…
[3 mins 16 sec] Yaccarino: “The team at Twitter is fantastic”
At least she lasted 1 whole minute before that embarassing contradiction. I can’t do another 38 minutes of watching that mess though, too painful right from the start.
Was she? Any posts about “why isn’t X banned too?” were buried under an avalanche of reactionary tantrums about losing their platform to discuss hitting children. For the overwhelming majority of users, it was “this goes too far”, not “this doesn’t go far enough”.
Which means that realistically, she never got past the low hanging fruit. These were the days when a lot of these places still had plausible deniability so it was easy to pull in wider support.
My baseless guess is that she came in as CEO and noticed they were handing over some very predictable post histories every time there was a mass shooting but couldn’t come out and say “check out all these domestic terrorists” because it would damage the brand.
She’s even sighted in the wikipedia article “In 2023, Linda Yaccarino was appointed as the CEO of Twitter while the company was facing an uncertain future and a number of challenges, including outages, user discontent and advertiser skepticism. The company lost more than half of its value since its acquisition by Elon Musk six months prior.”
She definitely is a textbook example of a scapegoat woman CEO for an unpopular company, but also she seems to be very aware and supportive of the fascist brain rot she’s enabling so I won’t shed a tear for her (nor any CEO but you get my point)
I mean if Elon offered me the job as CEO of twitter, I would have absolutely taken it knowing full well I was set up to fail. I don’t think Linda was ignorant of that fact. Now she may suck in tons of other ways, but I don’t really see how her “performance” at the conference reflects on anyone but herself.
While you’re technically right, I don’t see a material difference between paying with cash and paying with data (Verge sign up is free, but it’s still sign up).
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She’s a scapegoat for money. Elon will blame her for any failings when he finally cuts ties. She will then land safely with a golden parachute.
She is the Tom Wambsgans of the industry. If she dies eating shit for Elon, another billionaire will gladly resurrect her and offer her even more money to eat more shit because she did the job so well the first time.
It’s okay Verge, she is not a damsel in distress. She asked for this specifically.
She
tookpractically begged for the job, no sympathy.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff
There’s risky, and then there’s walking into a blender. This tends towards the latter.
fuck right off with that, I’ve read her history
Indeed, I have little respect for advertisers and I disagree with her politics. But I wouldn’t say I have no sympathy, and I offered a plausible explanation on why she might have taken the job.
I mean, you’re welcome to your own judgment regarding how much sympathy to have, but she chased the job knowing full well why the job needed to be filled, so I have no sympathy when she makes herself look like an idiot for Elon. She resigned from NBCUniversal the same day her Twitter position was announced. She didn’t actually need a new job, but she made a choice to take this one and all the bullshit that comes with it.
edit: it’s possible she did want a new job, but I’m certain she could have held out for something better than this.
Well, we agree that she looked terrible. Here’s the evidence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYymRU-bfpQ
oh yeah, it’s bad, if taking a position with Musk didn’t ding her reputation, that showing certainly did.
Wasn’t sure I’d listen to this whole thing but half way threw it starts to really get weird. Damn, kind of feel bad for her…it most be hell working for Elon.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYymRU-bfpQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
At least she lasted 1 whole minute before that embarassing contradiction. I can’t do another 38 minutes of watching that mess though, too painful right from the start.
She’s a woman Elon put in power to toss under the bus when his company failed.
Lookup glass cliff. Happened at reddit as well.
And looking back, she was absolutely in the right clearing out those communities.
She wasn’t controversial for banning /r/fatpeoplehate, she was controversial for banning it but not banning subs like /r/the_donald as well.
Was she? Any posts about “why isn’t X banned too?” were buried under an avalanche of reactionary tantrums about losing their platform to discuss hitting children. For the overwhelming majority of users, it was “this goes too far”, not “this doesn’t go far enough”.
Which means that realistically, she never got past the low hanging fruit. These were the days when a lot of these places still had plausible deniability so it was easy to pull in wider support.
My baseless guess is that she came in as CEO and noticed they were handing over some very predictable post histories every time there was a mass shooting but couldn’t come out and say “check out all these domestic terrorists” because it would damage the brand.
She’s even sighted in the wikipedia article “In 2023, Linda Yaccarino was appointed as the CEO of Twitter while the company was facing an uncertain future and a number of challenges, including outages, user discontent and advertiser skepticism. The company lost more than half of its value since its acquisition by Elon Musk six months prior.”
When someone named Kafka says it’s the “weirdest”…that says something!
She definitely is a textbook example of a scapegoat woman CEO for an unpopular company, but also she seems to be very aware and supportive of the fascist brain rot she’s enabling so I won’t shed a tear for her (nor any CEO but you get my point)
I mean if Elon offered me the job as CEO of twitter, I would have absolutely taken it knowing full well I was set up to fail. I don’t think Linda was ignorant of that fact. Now she may suck in tons of other ways, but I don’t really see how her “performance” at the conference reflects on anyone but herself.
I learned the term “glass cliff” when she was hired.
See also: Canada’s first and only female PM, Kim Campbell
Archive without paywall
deleted by creator
There’s no paywall on theverge.
Narrator: yes there is
To me, this is the same as a paywall.
I hit a wall on mobile.
tell me more
Oh! Sorry, I stand corrected.
Reporters and journalists deserve to get paid for their work.
My comment was purely about whether or not a paywall exists.
While you’re technically right, I don’t see a material difference between paying with cash and paying with data (Verge sign up is free, but it’s still sign up).
Not usually, but I hit one this time