Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino Is Teetering on the Glass Cliff

Dec 31, 2023

Vittoria Elliott

In December, Elon Musk, then only two months into his tenure as owner and CEO of Twitter, put out a poll asking whether he should resign as CEO of the company. When a 57.5 percent majority encouraged him to resign, Musk tweeted, "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 and servers teams."

Ten days ago, Musk announced that he had indeed found someone foolish enough to helm the floundering social media company: Linda Yaccarino. Taking a CEO seat was a step up for Yaccarino, who previously led global advertising at NBCUniversal, and it enlarged the tiny pool of women leading tech companies.

But although Yaccarino is widely regarded in the ad industry as highly competent, people who study workplace gender dynamics see her as the latest victim of a pernicious pattern known as the glass cliff, in which women are more likely to be promoted into top jobs at organizations in crisis. That makes women leaders appear less likely to succeed, because they are drafted when times are toughest.

"In some ways I have yet to see a better definition of the glass cliff than the challenge Elon has set out here," says Christy Glass, a sociologist at Utah State University who has studied the phenomenon. "This just seems to be the perfect storm of a situation at Twitter."Past examples of the glass cliff in tech include the appointment of Google executive Marissa Mayer as Yahoo CEO in 2012, when the company was rapidly losing ground to Google and Facebook. She eventually negotiated a $4.5 billion sale to Verizon and stepped down. Investor Ellen Pao was appointed CEO of Reddit in 2014 to clean up the platform but resigned in 2015 after backlash from users.

Musk's acquisition of Twitter created textbook glass cliff conditions, sending the platform into a downward spiral. The company made 90 percent of its revenue through advertising in 2021 but has seen advertisers flee and revenue dip.

Shortly after purchasing the company in October 2022, the entrepreneur began a campaign of layoffs that included firing much of the company's content moderation and policy staff. At the same time, he offered an "amnesty" to previously banned users, including neo-Nazis. In December, just two months after Musk's acquisition, Twitter's earnings had fallen by 40 percent, according to The Wall Street Journal. Musk's plan to build a subscription business stream by charging for a service called Twitter Blue has netted little revenue.

Jeremy White

Kate Knibbs

WIRED Staff

Stephanie McNeal

Those challenges would be daunting for any CEO. But Alexander Haslam, professor of social and organizational psychology at the University of Queensland in Australia, who co-coined the term "glass cliff," says that while many organizations contain capable women leaders there's often a preference for the patriarchal status quo—until things come to a breaking point. When a company is in trouble and wants to send a clear signal it is making substantial changes, choosing a radically different leader is an easy option.

"You need to communicate as vividly and clearly as possible that you’re on some different trajectory. And the stronger the break from the past, the clearer the signaling," Haslam says. "For that reason women or members of other minority groups are often preferentially appointed under these circumstances."

Yaccarino's background in advertising, Twitter's primary source of revenue, certainly makes her a logical choice to try to salvage the company's crumbling business. But experts who spoke to WIRED say that one reason women step into risky glass cliff roles is that they generally have few other chances to take leadership positions, despite being highly qualified.

"For a lot of executive women, sometimes their first opportunity to step into a role that's really that powerful is to do a turnaround of an entire division or company," says Coco Brown, CEO of the Athena Alliance, a networking organization for women executives in business.

That can make turning down a precarious glass cliff role difficult, even when the risks are evident. According to Glass of Utah State University, though women are more likely to be appointed in times of crisis they are also more likely to be blamed for the crisis itself and, later, replaced by a white male CEO in what researchers have dubbed the savior effect.

"Very rarely are women CEOs given a second chance," Glass says. "It's a double whammy for women CEOs: These crisis appointments may be the only opportunities they have, and by virtue of stepping into them they put their future leadership careers in jeopardy."

But, Glass says, many times women are often best suited to help right the ship. Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors, famously brought the company back from the brink of failure after the 2008 financial crash. Anne Mulachy took over as CEO of Xerox as it was flailing, making it profitable, before stepping down in 2009.

Yaccarino's chances of success, says Sandra Quince CEO at Paradigm for Parity, an organization addressing the gender gap in businesses, will partly depend on how much time and freedom she's given to turn the ship around. The support of the board and Musk's willingness to truly let go of the reins could be crucial.Musk has said that with Yaccarino in as CEO he will become executive chair of Twitter's board as well as the company's CTO. He's also CEO of Tesla and of SpaceX, where president and COO Gwynne Shotwell is responsible for day-to-day operations.

"She's going to need the board to be supportive of her vision that she has for the organization," Quince says. "She's going to need someone to run air cover for her. In times like this, where you're trying to figure it out, no one is perfect, and mistakes can be made."

Jeremy White

Kate Knibbs

WIRED Staff

Stephanie McNeal

It may be tempting to see Yaccarino's appointment as the cynical last gasp of a failing company. But Brown of the Athena Alliance says Yaccarino's bravery should be applauded, whether or not Twitter turns out to be salvageable.

"We shouldn't be saying that has been set up to fail publicly but that she has decided that this is her shot to try something a bit heroic," says Brown. "By most people's accounts, she is going to fail. But wouldn't it be cool if she pulls it out?" If Yaccarino manages that, it might be the most surprising twist of all in the spiraling tale of Musk's takeover.