Elon Musk to step down as Twitter CEO once he finds a replacement

Elon Musk has said he will step down from his role as CEO of Twitter as soon as he finds “someone foolish enough to take the job”.

Musk announced the news of his imminent departure in a tweet published today (December 21). “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job”, the billionaire wrote. “After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.” Musk’s Twitter resignation comes just months after his official takeover of the social media site in October of this year.

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 announcement follows a poll Musk conducted on Twitter earlier this week, in which he asked users whether he should resign as CEO following criticism of his ban on the sharing of external social media links on the site. “Should I step down as head of Twitter?”, Musk wrote in the poll’s accompanying caption. “I will abide by the results of this poll”.

As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022

Not long after launching the poll — in which more than 57% of the 17 million respondents answered ‘Yes’ to his resignation — Musk tweeted: “As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it”. Despite the decisive results of the poll, Musk elaborated on the difficulty of managing Twitter, writing that “no one wants the job” and that “There is no successor.”

No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 19, 2022

Musk’s resignation bookends what has been a tumultuous few months for Twitter under his leadership. In November, the Tesla CEO conducted a separate poll asking whether the Twitter account of Donald Trump should be reinstated, before going on to reinstate both Trump’s account and that of Kanye West. More recently, Musk made headlines once again by banning a number of journalists from CNN, New York Times and Washington Post, claiming that they had “doxxed” his location and “endangered his family”.

Following criticism over the ban, Musk shared a poll on whether he should unsuspend the accounts, after seven days or immediately, with 58.7% of users voting for the latter. “The people have spoken,” he wrote before reinstating the accounts. Since his October takeover, Musk’s management of Twitter has been criticised by author Stephen King, comedians Kathy Griffin and Sarah Silverman, and musician Jack White, among others.