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‘The new CEO of Twitter is amazing’: Musk gives an update on his replacement

February 15, 2023 | | Print Article

Billionaire businessman Elon Musk is looking to relinquish his position as the chief executive officer of Twitter sometime before the year’s end, he revealed while speaking remotely Wednesday at the World Government Summit in Dubai.

“I need to stabilize the organization and just make sure it’s in a financially healthy place and the product road map is clearly laid out. I’m guessing toward the end of this year should be a good timing to find someone else to run the company. I think it should be in stable condition around the end of this year,” he said, as reported by Bloomberg.

The news shouldn’t come as too much of a shocker. Ever since he bought Twitter, Musk has been saying that he plans to step aside at some point. It’s just not clear when.

“I expect to reduce my time at Twitter and find somebody else to run Twitter over time,” he said as recently as November.

What’s known is that he officially started looking for a new CEO in December.

“Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk is searching for a new chief executive of the company, sources [said],” CNBC reported at the time.

This was right around the time that he posted a poll asking whether he should step down as the head of Twitter:

All this said, reports that Musk has already picked a new CEO are false. Though hilariously enough, this false belief stems from tweets posted by Musk himself.

On Tuesday he posted tweets of his own dog, Flocki, seated at his chair wearing a “CEO” shirt.

“The new CEO of Twitter is amazing,” he wrote as a caption.

Look:

The good news for Musk is that he’s now under less pressure to find a CEO. The reason why is that his other company, Tesla, is doing better.

“Some prominent shareholders in Tesla have pushed for someone else to helm Twitter sooner rather than later, as the car company’s stock fell after Musk acquired the social-media platform in October for $44 billion,” Barron’s notes.

The stock eventually bottomed out at around $108 before suddenly bouncing back into the $200s in February.

“The worries around Musk needing to sell more Tesla stock to fund Twitter losses have moved into the background. This is an important dynamic that starts to remove this overhang from the Tesla story,” analysts at Wedbush, led by Dan Ives, reportedly recently wrote in a research note.

(Source: Google)

This doesn’t mean Musk doesn’t have his work cut out for him.

Indeed, just this week employees at a Tesla factory in Buffalo, New York announced their intentions to form a union.

“The employees, who label data for Tesla’s Autopilot technology at the company’s plant in Buffalo, New York, sent an email to Musk early Tuesday with their intent to unionize. Employees say they’re seeking better pay and job security alongside a reduction in production pressures that they say have been harmful to their health,” according to Bloomberg.

“Workers at the plant [said] that Tesla monitors keystrokes to track how long employees spend per task and how much of the day they spend actively working. This leads some to avoid taking bathroom breaks, six employees said,” Bloomberg reported on Tuesday Tuesday.

Musk is notorious for his disdain for unions.

In 2018 he got in trouble after he posted a tweet suggesting that his employees would lose their stock options if they unionized.

“Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues and give up stock options for nothing?” he tweeted.

“This message was seen as a threat by workers, union activists and a California labor judge. The judge ruled Musk’s tweets to be an illegal action against employees’ rights to organize,” according to NPR.

Vivek Saxena
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