Hey all, it's Kurt in San Francisco. Elon Musk's hunt for a replacement Twitter CEO could prove challenging — not least because he's not really going anywhere. But first... Today's must-reads: • Micron will cut 10% of its workforce • The Guardian newspaper was hacked • Elon Musk said cost-cutting averted a $3 billion shortfall Got a minute? We'd love your input on Bloomberg Tech and how we can best serve you. Please take this short survey. Elon Musk is officially stepping down from the helm of Twitter Inc. Well, kinda. The social network's new owner – who has already fit about three years' worth of chaos and scandals into just two months on the job — tweeted Tuesday that he planned to "resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!" The decision came after Musk polled Twitter users to see whether he should give up the top job. Vox populi, vox dei, as he likes to say. The results— 58% in favor of his exit — may not have mattered much. It was expected that Musk would only keep the Twitter job temporarily, and that makes sense; he runs several other companies, including Tesla Inc. and SpaceX, and it's fair to think that Twitter deserves a full-time chief executive officer, even if co-founder and onetime leader Jack Dorsey may argue otherwise. But on announcing his plans to resign, Musk added one major caveat: "After that, I will just run the software & servers teams," he tweeted. At Twitter, that promises to be a very big job. In October, he tweeted that "software engineering, server operations & design will rule the roost" once the company was his. Since taking over, he's repeatedly prioritized engineering internally, and it's the group of employees he most values, people familiar with the company say. Which means that while Musk plans to resign as CEO, he also plans to keep running what will arguably be Twitter's most important and time-consuming group — a challenge considering all his other commitments. "He's spread way too thin for any human being no matter how brilliant he is," says Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor of leadership studies and management at Yale, who has followed Musk's career closely. So if Musk isn't really leaving Twitter, what do we make of the CEO search he's currently conducting? We know that Twitter needs more than just an engineering team to operate. For starters, the company makes almost all of its money from advertising – a reliance Musk is trying to alleviate by selling subscriptions – and the billionaire has proven to be a conflicting character for big brand advertisers looking for a stable, controversy-free place to spend their money. We also know that Twitter can play an outsized role in culture, politics and news. Presumably, whoever Musk hires to take over the reins should be able to manage those parts of Twitter's business – the ones that the de facto CEO (Musk) either doesn't want to take or probably shouldn't touch. This person should understand how the media and advertising worlds work, and appreciate how complicated and nuanced it can be to write policies governing online speech. At this moment, it's unclear who that person is. As with any CEO search, speculation is already running rampant, and some have actively raised their hands for the job. (We see you, Snoop Dogg!) It's likely that Musk brings on someone he's known for years – someone he trusts, and someone who will understand that being "CEO" doesn't actually mean being CEO. At least not while Musk is the owner. As Musk told Twitter employees way back in June, he doesn't really care what he's called – as long as people understand who is in charge. "There's a lot of chores if you're the CEO," he said at the time. "I don't really care what the title is, but obviously people do need to listen to me." — Kurt Wagner An investor in both Twitter and Tesla said Elon Musk is "not suited" to run the social media company. Musk, to his credit, seems to be finally realizing this. A digital US dollar is a long way from reality, a Treasury official said. Intel broke up its graphics chip unit in a strategy shift designed to help it catch up with Nvidia and AMD. India's largest online grocer was valued at $3.2 billion in a new investment. It's eying an IPO by 2025. |
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