[CyberMacGyver]

One time they let her speak publicly it turned out to be a disaster. She never had any say and worst part is she was not even a good fall guy, it was clear who’s pulling the strings. The most immaterial and inconsequential hire ever.

I love all the replies on Twitter thanking her but during her time the valuation dropped 80% and they were suing advertisers for not advertising. Remarkably inept.

[sorcerer-mar]

It's weird that you say both she had no material power and also seem to imply the valuation drop and lawsuits were due to her ineptitude?

Anyway she volunteered to be a puppet for a man who is clearly off the rails and her legacy will forever be stained.

[josefresco]

Both things can be true: Valuation did drop during her tenure, AND she was not to blame.

Therefore the praise is weird, because she seemingly neither helped nor hurt the business.

[madeofpalk]

One would imagine that a CEO lacking power is the precise reason a company would perform poorly.

[falcor84]

Indeed. It was such a paradoxical situation from the start, with her both reporting to Musk as the chairman and owner, while at the same time "managing" him as the CTO. I'm surprised that the charade went on for as long as it did.

[ethbr1]

I'd imagine the paycheck helped resolve the quandary.

[teyc]

On Acquired podcast, Ballmer spoke of his experience as CEO with Gates as CTO. It was hell.

[prepend]

I just listened to that episode yesterday and that’s not how I perceived it all. Ballmer barely described it as much as I remember.

[xdavidliu]

I wonder how this setup compares with Mira Murati and Greg Brockman.

[nradov]

I mean I've been in a few jobs where I had to "manage" my boss in order to accomplish anything.

[JohnMakin]

were those jobs fun? Certainly havent been for me

[frdnurd]

Elizabeth Holmes had all the power. Also being competent matters.

[mandmandam]

> she was not to blame.

Fall guys bear some of the blame in the fall.

My long-held [0] personal theory - borne out by everything Musk has done, and by who bought Twitter - is that it was bought to curb the possibility of large positive social movements along the lines of OWS or BLM.

Enabling that can entail being useless at your supposed job, while doing your actual job (which deserves some amount of blame, from a number of perspectives).

0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36685384

[jjfoooo4]

I think Elon truly believed in the subscription model, which would free him from advertiser content influence. That and being terminally addicted to the platform himself, and being an impulsive gambler. I really don't think we've gotten where we are due to any (successful) master plan

[reactordev]

This. He was addicted to Twitter. He saw value in it and thought he could run it better. He wanted to be “The Place” where things were talked about. Where he could control the narrative.

History has shown us, the more you try to control it, the more it slips through your fingers. The best surfers know, you ride the wave, not fight it.

[ToucanLoucan]

See my only counterpoint to this theory is Musk has a long and well documented history of being absolutely stone desperate to be cool, which is the only thing he can't buy, and he simply revels in his ownership of Twitter even as he comprehensively runs it into the ground as a business.

Now, would he be upset about such efforts being derailed as a result, or is he even slightly bothered about his website now being packed to the tits with Nazis? Absolutely not. But I do think as unbelievably cringe as it would be if true, I really think he bought the damn thing because he just wanted to be the meme lord.

Mainly I just struggle with giving him as much credit as your theory does in terms of long term planning. He's an overgrown man-child.

[JohnBooty]

I think you and the parent poster are doing a good job of describing the same thing from different angles. Both observations are true.

Musk wanted to steer culture toward his own ends as the parent poster described and he wanted to be seen as some kind of.... cool vanguard of that, as you say.

It's really different facets of the same thing, right?

[ToucanLoucan]

I guess what I struggle with is seeing Musk taking that kind of top-down strategic view of things? Which that could entirely be a me problem. I think there's an inherent bias in the way a lot of people think where they assign these Machiavellian motives especially to the super-privileged and those in positions of power, the 5D chess type shit, and I tend to bias in the other direction where... a lot of times these guys are just fucking losers and they don't think terribly dissimilarly from your weird uncle who doesn't come to the reuinions anymore.

Ultimately though, this is a bit of a weird aside to go on I fully admit. The "solutions" so to speak for people like this are basically the same whether they are dark-room schemers or dickheads with far too much money and not nearly enough accountability.

[Zigurd]

He is an overgrown manchild in a playground full of overgrown Randian Straussian manchilds. They are lucky 90% of the normies don't care, yet.

[mandmandam]

> He's an overgrown man-child.

Damn near every mega-billionaire is, almost by definition. If the best thing you can come up with to do with money is make more of it at other people's expense, then you're not even close to what I'd call mentally mature.

That doesn't stop many oligarchs from making cunning plans with layers and layers of depth, or being excellent at misdirection and media manipulation - both of which Musk also has a long and well documented history of showing. It also doesn't stop them from hiring people to make and/or refine those plans. Shit, there's probably cunning bootlickers out there, like Yarvin, just pitching this shit to them all the time.

> I just struggle with giving him as much credit as your theory does in terms of long term planning

As far as plans go, "buy Twitter and destroy it because it threatens our class interests - but pretend you're doing it for free speech or whatever" isn't especially complicated. Just piss off advertisers, users, and your staff, in plausibly deniable ways. It's not like corporate media are going to call you on it.

[dzhiurgis]

Sorry, what money did billionaires took from you?

[woah]

It's conspiratorial thinking to assume that everything that happens in the world is perfectly executed by omniscient villains with 20/20 hindsight. Maybe a formerly-brilliant but drug-addled rich guy just bought a social media platform with bad fundamentals at the height of its valuation and then mismanaged it while flailing around with other ventures and political adventures. Occam's razor.

[quantified]

You are conveniently omitting his reason to buy it. Personal megaphone and shortly thereafter LLM training data are the simplest reasons.

[woah]

Maybe he just spent a lot of time shitposting on there.

[rgreek42]

He did not want to buy it. He took an arrogant joke far enough that the Delaware Court of Chancery forced him to do it. He never wanted it earnestly.

[contrast]

I think the GP is suggesting a simple explanation of why it went badly, since that is the subject of the thread, rather than an explanation of why Musk bought Twitter. No need for conspiratorial accusations of conveniently omitting anything.

[scns]

> formerly-brilliant

When?

[Zigurd]

TBF going from the cobbled together roadster to actually mass producing cars was an accomplishment, as was giving his engineers the latitude to keep trying to land a Falcon 9 booster.

Then he started to think it was his brilliance that made those things successful. Cybertruck is his baby. So is Starship. He's telling his people to make it work with a little or no moderation of his concepts.

[numpad0]

Wasn't elonjet the turning point? There are some arguments around that he might not have clear cognitive distinction between verbal accusations and physical violence. Maybe that was the missed shot from rooftop for him. Elon before those events was a Steve Jobs Junior figure, that is to say, he was not problematic enough for the rest of the world including myself to focus on the crazy side.

[cschep]

I'd love to hear why this is being downvoted? Not agreeing is one thing, but it seems like a reasonable thing to suggest?

[spankalee]

> It's conspiratorial thinking to assume that everything that happens in the world is perfectly executed by omniscient villains with 20/20 hindsight.

Because the original comment isn't doing this. It's not talking about everything, it's talking about one specific thing in a very plausible scenario.

It wouldn't even need to be a very complicated or widespread "conspiracy": Just Musk and a few VC guys in a Signal or Telegram thread saying

> someone should just buy Twitter and downrank all these crazy leftists

> Hmm

> I'll help line up financing.

> Ok!

This isn't flat earth, chem trails, lizard people, or weather weapons. It's not even Illuminati, Masons, or Skull and Bones. We've seen some of these chats already.

[anigbrowl]

Because Musk has provided abundant evidence of his political orientation over the last several years.

[freejazz]

> perfectly executed by omniscient villains with 20/20 hindsight

Is a strawman, to which the conclusion is also defied by the plain evidence of everything Musk has done on Twitter

[schmidtleonard]

You are missing the forest for one very odd tree. Yes, the tree is wacky, but

* Every private media company has beneficial owners * Those beneficial owners are rich * Rich people who own things for a living have incentives opposed to those of most people, who work for a living

These are not conspiracies, they are just basic facts of capitalism.

[psunavy03]

Better to put "facts" in quotation marks considering that is clearly a statement of opinion, and a fairly caricatured one at that.

[steveBK123]

Pretty good theory

[harikb]

hmm... I am drawing a parallel between your theory on 'controlled opposition' from the linked thread from 2023, to the current M vs T fight. Plausible...

[yibg]

Thing is, she failed at being the fall person. It's clear to everyone who was calling the shots, so ironically she was ineffective as the fall person.

[breppp]

My conspiracy theory was that because of Musk's involvement in OpenAI he had foreknowledge of the impeding release of ChatGPT. In that context, Twitter as a source for AI training can be far more valuable than a rage filled social network. However he still failed horribly to time the market

[debugnik]

> Twitter as a source for AI training can be far more valuable than a rage filled social network

Isn't Twitter the go-to example of a rage filled social network?

[foobarchu]

I took them to mean it can be both things at once, and one is more valuable than the other. Not that being an ai training source would make it a rage filled social network.

[fpia]

nah, that's 4chan

[claytonjy]

how would you explain how hard he fought to NOT buy twitter?

people seem to forget he was legally forced to buy Twitter after he tried for months to get out of his joke bid, primarily through claiming he was misled about the extent of bots on the platform

[breppp]

The entire idea is to buy an undervalued platform using insider information, if the stock price plunges after he committed to a price then it's no longer undervalued. This has happened between his bid and termination announcements.

I also roughly remember he had his Tesla holdings as collateral creating some liquidity crisis for him.

This elaborate explanation does not mean it isn't wrong and the original theory of idiot-with-money does not hold

[sleepybrett]

He just had to pay what 1/50th of his bid to exit the buy. He'd make that bill back in what a month?

[PaulHoule]

Nothing positive can come out of Twitter for McLuhanite reasons.

Zohran Mamdami's greatest attribute in media is that if you see him in video you see him listening to people. Even people who aren't inclined to agree with him talk to him and say "he was so nice, he listened to me." High-D [1] billionaires who support High-D candidates such as Clinton, Cuomo and Adams are driven crazy by this. [2]

Even though Twitter does provide a back channel and a Twitter user may really be a nice guy who listens and replies, the structure of the thing is such that you don't see that user listening and in fact the user interface on Twitter makes it really hard to see that conversation for outsiders in the way that the heavy Twitter user doesn't get. Not least because the heavy Twitter user might not realize that people who aren't logged in don't see anything at all (pro tip: just don't post links to Twitter on HN, you might see a great discussion with a lot of context, the rest of us just see a single sentence floating in space without any context)

On video though, the person who listens listens visibly, you see the microexpressions in real time as they react to what the other person is saying. It's a thing of beauty. (Coalition leaders such as Chuck Schumer and Nancy Peloci do a lot of listening as part of their job but constituents only see them talking!)

The above is a second order concern compared to the general compression of discourse in Twitter which is talked about in [2]. Twitter addicts spend 4-5 hours a day traversing graphs to follow discussions and understand (or think they understand?) context, the rest of us just see "white farmers" which means one thing if you're racist, another if you're "anti-racist", and just means "move along folks, nothing more to see here" for the great silent majority. When Twitter is at equilibrium every movement creates and equal and opposite amount of backlash, nothing actually changes except polarization increases, there is more and more talking and less and less listening, and the possibility of real social change diminishes.

Burn it down.

[1] https://darkfactor.org/

[2] for once good NYT content that isn't paywalled: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/opinion/ezra-klein-show-c...

[gsf_emergency_2]

Style: Manhattan

Generation: Zohran

https://indianexpress.com/article/fresh-take/zohran-mamdani-...

High time the left reinvented memes their own way, "mutability over machismo" (& not a shred of maudlin)

Better link for dark factors imho https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=9935796152480174745...

[thayne]

I don't think she is entirely to blame, but I think there is some blame for not standing up to Musk and leading better.

[dctoedt]

> I think there is some blame for not standing up to Musk and leading better.

That seems in the same category as saying there's some blame on her for not working harder on basketball in her youth and so never becoming a WNBA Finals MVP. (Narrator: Um, no, she's not nearly tall enough ....)

[SpicyLemonZest]

I'm just not sure her complete lack of power to stand up to Musk is a defense. If a controversial rich guy offers you a CEO job that consists entirely of laundering his reputation by pretending his decisions are your own, you have a social responsibility not to take it. I'd be more sympathetic if she were some random person who couldn't otherwise dream of an executive level pay package, but she was the head of ads at NBC.

[michaelt]

> If a controversial rich guy offers you a CEO job that consists entirely of laundering his reputation by pretending his decisions are your own, you have a social responsibility not to take it.

I don't think you become the CEO of any major company by believing that "social responsibility" exists. Doesn't the job pretty much select for the type of person who thinks the world owes them $20+ million a year?

With that said - it's dumb to blame the puppet for the acts of the ventriloquist.

[Lu2025]

> a social responsibility not to take it

She was paid $6M a year + undisclosed stock package. A lot of people will set aside their morals for this amount of money.

[greedo]

“We have established what you are, madam. We are now merely haggling over the price.”

[squeaky-clean]

This analogy would work if she actually was the WNBA Finals MVP but didn't score a single point.

[Aeolun]

I mean, you are hired as a CEO by Elon Musk, there must be some certain expectations on the capabilities of a CEO, and I think one of the first one is being able to stand up for yourself, if nothing else.

[rendaw]

GP is specifically responding to

> Remarkably inept.

She did exactly what she was hired for. The plan was terrible, but she executed it as well as expected. It's hard to see any ineptitude.

[Spooky23]

She shut her mouth and didn’t cause trouble.

[selcuka]

It is possible that people think that the valuation would be even worse if she wasn't the CEO. Unlikely, but possible.

[lenkite]

> Valuation did drop during her tenure

Valuation also bounced back during her tenure.

[lenkite]

No idea why the truth is being downvoted so heavily ? X is valued at $44 billion by the financial times as of March 2025.

[xnx]

> her legacy will forever be stained

Where can I sell my legacy for $6 million/year?

[danans]

> Where can I sell my legacy for $6 million/year?

I know you meant your comment as sarcasm, but to do it, you need to have a legacy worth those kind of numbers to begin with, instead of selling your labor as most of us here do. It's not so different that celebrities associating themselves with brands through advertising.

And as distasteful as it seems to many of us, people like her spend years building their social networks and a reputation for various personality and behavioral traits in a boardroom.

Also, I doubt her legacy is closed at this point. The traditional next step would be to write a book based on her career capped off by her experiences at Twitter.

[bottlerock]

Sounds like a snooze.. But maybe someone will pay to not take chances.

[abirch]

My question is where does she go from here?

Like if she became my CEO, I'd really worry about my company/job.

[GCA10]

Lots of corporate boards, university boards, nonprofit boards, etc. make room for folks like her. She understands something about social media and the digital future -- and even if that expertise doesn't impress many folks on HackerNews, it will seem quite sufficient and robust to the elderly trustees and big-donor board members of Pleurisy State University.

Being 62 is the perfect age for such roles. Young enough to climb a flight of stairs; old enough to nod appropriately to her new peers' references from the 1980s. Executive search firms will be eager to guide her into as many board roles as she might want.

[rtkwe]

Depends on how likely you think it is she's a puppet CEO for a drug crazed, edge lord, owner or if she'll actually be allowed to do the job.

[pavlov]

She’s 62 years old. She can just retire.

[snickerdoodle12]

Invest the 6mil and enjoy a carefree life?

[deathanatos]

$6M/y, for 2 years. $12M. I'd take the carefree life.

[dyauspitr]

With the tens of millions she made does she even need to go anywhere?

[tbrownaw]

Lifestyles tend to expand to consume the money available.

[delusional]

To some other founder/acquirer that wants to maintain control while putting somebody else in the seat.

You're acting like Elon is uniquely stupid.

[NetOpWibby]

Elon's level of stupid feels unique at first glance but then if you look at how many people elected the current president...well.

[adolph]

Which given the nature of democracy are many of the same as the people who elected the last one and the one before, etc. Are we not all snowflake-unique kinds of stupid?

My point of gratitude for today is that my level of stupid is not nearly as consequential to others as some folks'.

[freejazz]

You think he's just normal stupid? It's a minimum especially stupid

[vintermann]

Politics! Or maybe management consultants. Lots of consulting jobs are really just about taking the blame.

[ethbr1]

And politics are about asigning the blame to someone else. :D

[frereubu]

Failure can teach you a lot if you're willing to learn.

[tempodox]

But did she actally fail?

[belter]

I will do it for half that price....

[geodel]

Don't wait. Pick up your phone and Call Elon right now as this position is filling up fast.

[devnullbrain]

Meta

[npc_anon]

What legacy?

She's not a well known public figure. She ran the ad department at NBC. Is now very rich and at age 61, close enough to retirement age.

[sorcerer-mar]

Do you not think someone who ran the ad department at NBC has a reputation?

"Legacy" doesn't mean "guy-on-the-street's perception of you."

[jazzyjackson]

?? I don't guess a guy on the street would have ever spared a thought for the head of NBC's ad department.

[sorcerer-mar]

Correct, which does not mean she doesn't have a legacy.

[npc_anon]

That's exactly what it does mean. If you're not famous, you have no legacy.

[pharrington]

Legacy means having a lasting impact on society or culture. As another example, the average Joe Schmoe has no clue that Fabrice Bellard even exists, yet Bellard inarguably has one helluva legacy.

On the other hand, there are many people who are famous, but will probably leave no legacy.

[npc_anon]

True, one can not be famous but still have a lasting impact on society. This is not one of those cases.

[sorcerer-mar]

That's the most npc thing I've ever heard.

[recursive]

If you have enough money, any age can be retirement age. The whole concept of "retirement" is really for the working class anyway.

[oooyay]

There's a market for CEOs that are "puppets" or managed by another CEO. In that way I doubt her reputation is necessarily stained as anyone making that much money lives in a different world and under different terms than (presumably) you and I do.

[sorcerer-mar]

Oh sure, I have no doubt she can get another cushy job if she wants it. I just mean that she has revealed herself as a coward at best, and a deplorable snake at worst.

[Onavo]

No, she's just helping to sculpt the glass cliff.

[Imnimo]

The way I see it, her job had two parts - reign in Elon, and then run the show. But she couldn't (or wasn't interested in) doing the first part, and so her tenure was a failure. Gwynne Shotwell at SpaceX does a great job at both, by contrast.

[egl2020]

Shotwell is amazing. She runs SpaceX, which is rocket science, and she has to manage Musk, which is harder than rocket science.

[scyzoryk_xyz]

She was hired to perform stunt, a nose-dive with the company.

Folks hired for something like that aren’t in it for “legacy”.

[thaumasiotes]

> It's weird that you say both she had no material power and also seem to imply the valuation drop and lawsuits were due to her ineptitude?

Why is that weird? Say you have a company operating normally. The CEO dies and isn't replaced. Do you think it's weird for the company's value to drop?

[Civitello]

Perhaps if there was success she would have had no material power and not have been responsible for the success.

[mcphage]

(1) She had no power

(2) If she did have power, nothing good happened during her tenure, so what would she even be thanked for?

[sorcerer-mar]

I'm not suggesting she should be thanked. I'm suggesting that the failures listed are hard to ascribe to her ineptitude.

[anonymars]

Right but the point was:

> *I love all the replies on Twitter thanking her* but during her time the valuation dropped 80% and they were suing advertisers for not advertising. Remarkably inept.

What was there to thank her for?

[sorcerer-mar]

Nothing! That's why I didn't comment on that. I commented on "remarkably inept."

[anonymars]

Gotcha. I guess another episode of "both participants think the other is crazy"

My read wasn't that the "inept" was specifically her, but rather the leadership of the company at the time in general (for which, regardless, she is being thanked on Twitter). In other words, either

(1) she was a figurehead that didn't do anything and thanking her is stupid

(2) she wasn't a figurehead and actually was in charge, in which case thanking her is still stupid because such leadership was inept (suing their advertisers, etc.)

[sdegutis]

> her legacy will forever be stained

I would like to believe that people can change over time.

[DonHopkins]

She had one job, and that was to get Musk to keep his fucking mouth shut, at which she failed spectacularly.

[librasteve]

well, yes. but she now has a much enriched resume

[olalonde]

You may not like Elon Musk but he's doing remarkably well for someone who is "clearly off the rails".

[feoren]

Yes, corruption pays. Although if "doing remarkably well" means being addicted to ketamine, having many exes and children who refuse to speak with you, tanking multiple businesses to the point that your products get sabotaged just for being associated with you, getting booed off stages, licking the boots of fascists in the hope they'll let you call them "daddy", paying people to play online games for you to impress nerds (unsuccessfully, instead getting online-bullied for it), etc., etc., then I think I'd rather not "do remarkably well", thank you very much.

Elon does not seem like a happy man. Is money the only points humans score themselves by? It's like watching someone bragging about getting the highest ever score at a game that they hate.

[AlexandrB]

> licking the boots of fascists in the hope they'll let you call them "daddy"

Which fascists?

[therouwboat]

German far-right party AfD?

[DonHopkins]

Do you mean that in the sense that he is licking the boots of so many fascists at once, including Trump, Xi Jinping, Putin, and any other fascist boot he can find, while calling them all daddy, that you're confused which of those many fascists feoren is referring to?

[refurb]

I’ve never seen so many political talking points packed into one HN comment.

[olalonde]

You have a distorted view or reality. Elon seems pretty happy to me and is undeniably successful in business - arguably the most successful entrepreneur of our time. I don't know much about his personal life but I suspect that him having babies with multiple women is due to personal choices rather than a sign of misfortune. He certainly doesn't seem "off the rails" to me. That said, I can understand that his lifestyle is not for everyone.

[lawlessone]

The man literally got punched out of the whitehouse for substance abuse lol

His children break contact with him moment they become adults. If it wasn't for the money he would have been forbidden to see them long ago.

Everyone hates him on the left and the right.

If you consider a rich 50 year old creep doing drugs and going around impregnating young women and paying them to go away as successful? Then yes he is ..

[olalonde]

What does being "successful in business" have to do with his personal life? Not to mention that most of the things you mentioned is based on questionable tabloid reporting.

[netsharc]

Commander Worf: "Captain, sensors are picking up a huge distortion up ahead. It appears to be... a reality distortion field."

[freejazz]

> due to personal choices rather than a sign of misfortune

What would be the difference, exactly?

[nobunaga]

No he isnt.

Tesla is going to down the shitter and he is trying to fool everyone that it suddenly is now an AI company lol with a disaster rollout for his taxis. Waymo is going to eat them for lunch. Driverless taxis with people overseeing things in the car lol Wow. Such autonomy. He also didnt even create the company. He basically stole it from some other guys who actually founded and built the early stages of tesla.

He doesnt and isnt capable of running SpaceX. Their current CEO and tech lead is the person who runs the business and is actually knowledgable in the space industry and space engineering. Elon? Oh he just is there for the launches.

His neuralink and xAI? lol Ok. Yes Im sure we will see a lot coming out of those businesses with most government and people know shunning his business's and himself. Oh and new version of a nazi LLM. Cant wait to use it. And Twitter. Wow so much great discourse and sensible conversation that it competes with truth social.

Yes, he is doing remarkably well because he has money. Just like Pablo escoabr had money. The leaders of Enron were also doing remarkably well for a while. What about the guy who ran that ponzi scheme? Maddof. Yes he was also doing remarkably well since no one knew the bullshit he was generating. Elon is a fraud like all these other successful people who may have created businesses but hide the bullshit well for now. One day though, it will all come crashing down. Then you and all other sheep will look like greater fools than you do now. You still have time to come to your senses. Just dont be a sheep and glorify any man or exalt him above others. Its quite simple. He is no genius. He is someone who takes advantage and exploit others for his personal gain and is more destructive to society today than he has ever been and people like you are contributing to it so congrats to screwing over other people.

[freejazz]

Like, financially? Sure. I don't think that was ever in dispute.

[olalonde]

In what sense is he "off the rails" then?

[thomassmith65]

My eleventh wife just gave birth to my 58th child. Musk seems perfectly normal to me /s

[olalonde]

So you mean that he is weird?

[thomassmith65]

Elon Musk is doing well now the same way Elvis Presley or Howard Hughs were doing well in their final years.

[nobunaga]

I think Bernie Made-Off is a better comparison. It will all come crashing down

[trimbo]

> her legacy will forever be stained

Interesting. My hot take is 99% of the time non-founder CEOs end up on the dustbin of history, successful or unsuccessful.

Terry Semel. John Akers. John Sculley, Carly Fiorina. Except among those of us in tech, all are now long forgotten failures. Even Gil Amelio, who made one of the most genius acquisitions ever, was fired and his name lost to the sands of time. My bet is nobody's going to remember Tim Cook or Sundar or Satya in 50 years, maybe even 20.

Possibly the only non-founder CEO who has made a real legacy in the last 100 years is Elon. I would also say TJ Watson Jr. but I very much wonder if that many HN commenters know who he is!

[ocdtrekkie]

I think the founders tend to have a love for the business and a long-term plan for it. Followup CEOs are more about the stock performance and happy to sell it for parts if it serves their bonus. Sundar and Satya took all of the strengths of those respective companies and burned them to the ground. Made a lot of money doing it, stockholders love them, but they're pale husks of their former businesses.

[jauntywundrkind]

Really good call out. Hitting someone from above & below seems not quite square.

In my view, there was plenty of opportunity to make a mark & do things, even with a ultra involved Musk.

But this person didn't bring much product leadership, didn't have a vision for the product. Having good business relationships might have been its own core competency, but whether Linda's fault or no, suing and going after businesses to try to score some vengeance for your own terrible behavior, and maybe coerce some people back: that's a terrible tactless look, that one would hope a leader like Linda could have helped steer away from.

[babypuncher]

I don't think this is what was happening. It's weird that people are thanking her when she functionally did nothing of value while the company has been spiraling. Either she was complicit in the whole thing, or she really did nothing at all. In either case, what is there for the users to thank?

[mrtksn]

I don't think she ever was a fall guy, Elon run a poll on should someone else be CEO of Twitter and lost the poll. It was quite entertaining, He didn't seem happy with the outcome and probably had to pay CEO level salary due to the stunt.

[gitremote]

"The glass cliff is a hypothesized phenomenon in which women are more likely to break the "glass ceiling" (i.e. achieve leadership roles in business and government) during periods of crisis or downturn when the risk of failure is highest."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff

[snypher]

Is this what happened at Reddit? I feel like they made some unpopular changes and used Ellen Pao as a patsy.

[mrguyorama]

You might have a point if he didn't ignore every other one of those polls he ran.

[joot82]

She was mainly brought on to fix relationships with advertisers, they were just pulling out that time because of rampant nazi and hate speech (by users) on the platform, after they fired the content moderation teams. I think she did what she could over the last 2 years and some of the ad revenue came back, but after the latest MechaHitler escapades I guess she got some texts from people...

[bhouston]

> The most immaterial and inconsequential hire ever.

I understand she did convince a lot of advertisers to come back and provided a veneer of credibility.

[tinco]

Given the circumstances, is an 80% drop that bad? Many people were expecting Twitter to simply go bankrupt. Perhaps she's the one that saved Twitter.

[cm2012]

Twitter valuation dropped for two primary reasons:

1) Most tech valuations dropped about 50%-80% in between Elon's offer and Reddit formally accepting it. This was the end of the 2021 tech boom.

2) Elon being a moron and turning off brand advertisers in any way he can when direct response ads don't really work on the platform.

[mandeepj]

> the valuation dropped 80% and they were suing advertisers for not advertising

That already happened before she got onboard.

> One time they let her speak publicly it turned out to be a disaster.

One time? She has spoken publicly many times. Care to share more about what you are referring to? I have no recollection of such a thing being done by her.

It's not easy to recover from your unpredictable boss shouting "FU" to your advertisers from a stage.

[odo1242]

Genuinely, I wasn't even aware that Musk had actually done the initially promised thing of appointing a different CEO.

[reactordev]

Top executives fail upwards. She did exactly what she set out to do.

[JumpCrisscross]

Hiring her would be a favour to Elon. She likely knew this when she took the job.

[Invictus0]

She got her bag and got out. Seems perfectly rational to me.

[zzzeek]

if she had no power to make decisions then how would the company's decline in valuation be her fault?

[misiti3780]

it didnt drop 80%:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/19/value-elo...

[lostlogin]

Even if the valuation is the same (seems unlikely), a fairly small rate of inflation on that sum of money is likely to be a number that matters.

[shkkmo]

"lost money due to inflation" (or even "lost money compared to an equivalent investment is a basket of similar stocks" is very different claim than "lost 80% of value". Currently the stock is down less than 10% from the purchase price (41 billion vs 44 billion).

Down 10% vs 80% is the kind of egregious factual "error" that gets made so frequently around Musk, that it is hard to take any criticism at face value. You don't like the guy and want to call him out? Get your facts straight or you're being counter productive.

[lostlogin]

A breathless defence against points never made.

[thih9]

> One time they let her speak publicly it turned out to be a disaster.

Context?

[AtlasBarfed]

So you are saying Elon musk is inept?

We all know who wanted to sue advertisers, we aren't stupid.

[andsoitis]

You’re saying two things:

- she is inept

- she never had any say (which I interpret, perhaps incorrectly, that she is competent but had her hands were tied)

Which is it?

[Xiol32]

Arguably a competent person wouldn't have persisted in a role where it was obvious they were not able to make a meaningful difference.

[mingus88]

Can’t speak for her, obviously, but personally I tend to wait to make my exit once I know the role is not working out

If I were in her shoes, I would have known I was going to leave during the worst of his tantrums, but I would have timed my exit for a more graceful moment.

Dramatically bailing out during a storm would not be a good look for an exec who wants another key role somewhere else

[mdasen]

If she were trying to time it, this timing seems weird. This is literally the day after Grok kept posting anti-semitism, praising Hitler, and calling itself MechaHitler. This might not be the least graceful moment for an exit, but there were so many more graceful exit times.

[bikezen]

FTA this was announced last week to employees.

"Ms. Yaccarino had discussed her plans to leave with X employees earlier this week, before the incident with Grok"

[steveBK123]

The speed at which replies mentioning Groks Nazi freakout get downvoted here make me really question where things are headed..

[selectodude]

All the race science phrenology bullshit is coming out of Silicon Valley. It's not a surprise to me that HN would be full of people "just reading the stats".

[andsoitis]

Another possibility is that she was fired.

[snickerdoodle12]

You'd be insane to leave a job with such few responsibilities and such insane compensation. Set for life.

[toomanyrichies]

Some might argue there are more important things in life than compensation.

Self-respect, for example.

[ceejayoz]

Unless you think said job is edging into "oh shit I might be part of the Nuremberg Trials II" territory.

Life got short for quite a few historical Nazis.

[snickerdoodle12]

Sure, and I agree, but that's not really related to what GP is saying

[ceejayoz]

It's related to what you are saying. It's a non-monetary reason it'd be non-insane to leave the role; "set for life" doesn't do you much good if you're in The Hague.

[cjbgkagh]

My guess of what they meant; On the assumption she had influence she was unable to use that influence prevent a collapse in value. It's a hedge to cover both options.

[sheepscreek]

Influencing the person pulling the strings is also a key skill. I won’t colour her entire person as inept but perhaps, wrong person wrong time. Musk doesn’t like or need yes men but if you say no him or want to try something different, you better have a well thought out idea/plan. There lies the challenge. How do you impress upon a very intelligent individual ever so often? Very few can.