Where the Hell Is X CEO Linda Yaccarino? | Hacker News Reader

Where the Hell Is X CEO Linda Yaccarino?

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32 pointsbelter45 comments

The demand for CEOs & similar to be public figures is strange. They are in place to direct & run things; public cheerleading for an organization does not need to be done by people in such roles, but can be farmed out to those with the inclination & ability to do it well, giving those involved in corporate governance the time & focus they need to do their jobs well.

Eh? That's literally what a leader of an org does. People want to hear from the leader, the guy making decisions. There are plenty of exec roles that don't involve public figuring, including CTO. The CEO is the ultimate "buck stops here" accountable person for shareholders, the public and the government.

This article completely ignores the announncement from when the new CEO was announced, that:

Musk was going to step away from client engagement and operating decisions, but stay at the helm guiding product and vision as chairman and CTO [1]

From the article: >>>>Parts of the all-hands read more as Yaccarino interviewing Musk about his vision for an everything app than as a CEO discussing their own.

X is a tech company. Musk is the CTO and the chairman. This is not the CEO's app.

How is this article sincere in light of this information?

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65574826

There is no other company you’d say that about.

Steve Jobs and Tim Cook was/is Apple’s CEOs. No one praises or criticizes the chairman of Apple or its CTO for the company’s direction or vision. Most people wouldn’t even be able to name that person.

Satya Nadella is MSFT’s CEO. He’s the one people talk about changing MSFT’s direction and vision. Not the chairman or CTO.

Heck, when Musk himself bought Twitter he made himself the CEO? Were you claiming that the person driving the decisions and providing vision for the company for the first few months Musk bought Twitter was the chairman or the CTO?

No. The CEO serves at the pleasure of the board and its chairman.

They oversee the CEO. The chairmain is Musk. He's also the board. He makes the rules for the CEO.

There's a clear agreement between the chairman and the CEO that the CEO's duties are operations and revenue. In this case, the CEO must sell the product(s) that the CTO creates. That is unusual for a CEO (mostly salesperson with OPS role), but not unexpected since she has no background leading a product or even creating one.

In all the cases you cited, none of the CEO's reported to 1 single individual that owned any material piece of the company themselves. Therefore you are comparing apples and oranges, Which is why this article is insincere.

Its a joke to think that the CEO of X would be like the CEO of every public company out there, when the CEOs role for X has already been stated publicly to be very different.

Exactly, the "tech" in "tech company", and the "technology" in "chief technology officer" are two completely different things.

"Tech companies" are arguably just product and service companies with a particular pattern of how the products work or sometimes how the business models work. From that perspective, it makes sense that many of the people running them came out of the product side, or the commercial side.

Twitter is not a tech company: their commercial output is not technology, technology is just a tool, Twitter is a social platform. Musk is not acting as a CTO, a CTO doesn’t set product direction. A CTO delivers for other stakeholders using technology. Every company uses technology now, it’s not a differentiator. Even if a company is a technology company, the CTO role doesn’t change, a technology company still has a CEO. The CFO at a finance company doesn’t set product direction.

I see what you mean, but I don't think this is how it always works in practice. In these jobs the lines are often blurred. Some companies don't have all of them, and, say, the COO might do what would be a CFO role in another company. In a strongly tech-focused product (like a PaaS or something), the CTO could be effectively doing a CPO role. In many places the CTO may be the CISO as well. In a company that depends significantly on "financial engineering" the CFO might have quite a deep say in the product direction.

You're right that Musk is not a textbook CTO, but I think he has been quoted as saying he's also CPO, and that fits a lot better.

Elon is in the same bucket as Trump for news organizations, in that anything goes and it's OK to print complete BS about him. Likely retaliatory given that Musk is seeking to increase citizen journalism and further make legacy press obsolete

Who cares about X?

Only shitposter and people who still think that the X followers they have really matter.

Who cares about Twitch? All the public bodies, charities, non-profits, health authorities etc who still use it as a primary real-time communications channel

Exactly half naked woman in bath tubes that cater to 14 year old boys!

If your country uses X as an emergency system then I would question the saneness of that country

I didn't say emergency. I mean stuff like the NHS, local authorities, charities etc, schools etc. putting out timely information to their followers

Ive never seen those organizations use Twitch.

Sorry I meant Twitter

>Who cares about X?

You care enough to have an emotional reaction to seeing it referenced. So that's one person at least.

X is still the place to go to create an american audience.

I always hated Twitter because it's like all social media - and it always worked like crap (poor UX, poor scaling), but all the US techies are there.

It's way less popular outside of the US.

The decentralised stuff didn't really catch on much from my experience, despite politicised people making an effort to recommend them.

The usability is even worse than X

Twitter only had 23% of American adults using it before Musk's acquisition in 2021. Assuming these numbers haven't declined much in the past 2 years, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram would be substantially better platforms to create an American audience.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/07/26/8-facts-a...

pssttt don't tell the twitter bubble that they are only relevant because journalism does not get enough money and its way easier to read tweets from PR agencies writing for politicians and bots psssttt

so you're saying they're satisfying a need in the market

If you are state supported your technically not part of the market :)

you have to have a tremendously naive world view to think information was free of state or other influence before X. If anything it is much more transparent now

You have to have tremendously naive world view to think that your statement is smart or adds some value here. If anything stating the most obvious thing anybody understands is much more transparent now

yet you fail to recognize it. talk about a self own

Lemmy is a perfectly good reddit replacement now that the boost app has migrated.

It's starting to reach that critical mass where people become toxic but still much better than reddit.

And since it's all federated, you can interact with mastodon users from the comfort of your lemmy app. It's certainly not a town square that most people use, but a corner of the internet that's less shitty than the rest.

I'm on lemmy and mastodon.

All social media will become tainted once they reach a level of people. Except 4chan this was always tainted :D

Yes and posting there US opinions in there broken US systems.

You pay 200 dollar for an asthma spray? Oh wait a High Billionaire needs to change the platform so for the first time a shit poster can actually achieve something. Nice!

And now the hole world should care!

During tumultuous times of breaking news, such as wartime, it becomes a place for live updates, rampant disinfo, fierce debate, and blatant propaganda.

Everyone hates the platform but it has a ton of engagement and traffic right now.

Yes propaganda created by troll factories all over the world!

Thats were I want my not at all faked live updates from war were the situation is unclear to everybody besides these troll factories. Thats what I want!!!!

That is what a lot of users unironically believe. Hate the platform, but understand its appeal.

> The rebrand effectively tore down Twitter’s globally recognized brand, says Christy Glass, a sociologist at Utah State University who has studied the glass cliff phenomenon

Unusually straightforward bit of nominative determinism, there.

Honestly, being X CEO is probs the worse job. You have someone who's really micro managing everything, but saying they aren't in charge at all.

A WEF shill who was hired as a fall-women in case Twitter/X sinks isn't really in charge. Who would've guessed.

I think it’s not too late to sell X and restore the Twitter brand. Create sane moderation policies and bring back advertisers.

It was too late the moment he publicly posted an offer on Twitter. I doubt he was really interested in the deal and suspect he didn’t realize the tweet he posted would be such a valid binding offer.

In other news, water is wet? Everyone knew Elon Musk bought twitter for him to control it. The CEO role was just is a scapegoat / figurehead role.

Someone showing up telling you that water is not wet in 3,2,...

Linda Yaccarino is the "fall guy". Nothing more, nothing less.

She should have jumped early on: "Elon did not keep his commitments" and landed as an EIR at a VC who has stuff in their portfolio with a need for ad sales clout.

>Despite Linda Yaccarino having the top job at X, Elon Musk’s outsize presence may be hampering her ability to succeed.

Who cares? Like seriously, they are adults who should be responsible for their careers, right?

This is a discussion forum for tech news.

Indeed, so whats so tech about some CEO career path or about doubtious organizational/leadership structure at social media app?

This is not tech. This is drama seeking at best

"Tech" can be taken to mean the software/hardware we use, or to mean the ecosystem of tech companies and that style of company. I think given what YCombinator is it makes sense that the latter is a significant part of the discussion here.

Some people here are tech CEOs, even if that's typically of small startups going through YC. Many others here work for tech companies. All of them may have a legitimate interest in how companies are run, company culture, strategy, career paths, and so on.

I understand that Musk spectating is a little more drama filled than analysing most tech companies, but this feels very much within the scope of this forum to me. There is interesting discussion to be had around it, even if much of the discussion isn't super high quality.

First Reaction: She's currently on the 6.66th level, where sinners learn what it's like to work on a pet project of Elan Musk's.

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