Elon Musk To Step Down As Twitter CEO: Help Us Pick His Replacement

Poll Elon Musk has made good on his promise to abide by the results of a Twitter poll that asked whether he should quit as CEO of the microblogging service – and delivered a resounding “YES” vote.

The site’s owner made the medium the message by announcing his decision with a tweet.

I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 21, 2022

The tweet leaves Musk plenty of wriggle room.

For starters, he might not try (or not try very hard) to find a replacement. It’s also conceivable Musk could be too busy to make the effort – the part-time liquor, tunnelling, space transport, automotive and flame thrower entrepreneur certainly has a lot on his plate! Musk could therefore remain CEO for quite some time.

Becoming software boss would also mean Musk retains enormous influence over Twitter. The one thing he appears to have done well in his time as its owner/CEO is accelerate the pace of feature development. Pity the CEO who tries to tell the owner/software boss what belongs at the top of Twitter’s to-do list.

Third, the job description – great foolishness – means the “talent” pool is so enormous that finding the right candidate will take quite an effort.

• Twitter staffer turned Saudi spy jailed for 3.5 years
• Musk bans private-plane-tracking @Elonjet on Twitter, threatens legal action
• Twitter will lose 32 million users by end of 2024, Insider Intelligence predicts
• Musk roundly booed on-stage at Dave Chappelle gig

The Register has therefore stepped in to help, by picking out a few candidates we think meet Musk’s criteria and could conceivably be foolish enough to want the gig.

So have at it, dear reader, and vote for your preferred CEO for the avian network!

If we’ve missed someone you think can do the job, name your preferred candidate in the comments.

We’ll send the results of this poll, and your other suggestions, to Elon Musk by carrier vulture. ®