Elon Musk says he will resign after unfavourable poll
After much speculation, the head of Twitter has announced he will be stepping down from the post.
Elon Musk tweeted on Dec. 20 that he “will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job.”
Instead, the controversial leader said that he “will just run the software and servers teams.”
The abrupt change of heart follows a Dec. 19 poll on Twitter, tweeted by Musk, asking if he should resign his post. After more than 17 million votes, a majority (57.5%) of respondents said yes, compared to 42.5% saying no.
Before asking the question, the executive had said he would abide by the results, having taken on the leadership role in November.
But the search for a replacement could take awhile, judging by a Dec. 18 tweet from Musk: “The question is not finding a CEO, the question is finding a CEO who can keep Twitter alive.”
Controversial leadership
Since taking the helm a few months ago, the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX and CEO and product architect of Tesla has faced his fair share of controversy.
Just recently, photos surfaced showing makeshift beds being set up in conference rooms and other offices at the San Francisco location of Twitter.
And in November, the company laid down the law for workers providing a hard deadline to submit to Musk’s new rules, saying, “Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore.”
The new CEO also terminated the employment of nearly half Twitter’s staff – though the company subsequently recalled some employees.