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A year after becoming CEO, Linda Yaccarino has shaken up her inner circle at X as she faces pressure from Elon Musk to increase sales and cut costs.
Yaccarino fired her right-hand man and head of business operations and communications Joe Benarrocha this month, three people familiar with the matter said.
Among other things, Yaccarino held Benarroch responsible for botching the platform’s rollout of new adult content policies by failing to notify clients of the changes before they were published, two X employees said.
Head of global government affairs Nick Pickles, whose role has been temporarily expanded to include managing all global communications, will take over responsibility for Benarroch, the people said.
This week, Pickles, one of the few top Twitter employees to survive the billionaire takeover, also attended the Cannes advertising festival for the first time, along with Yaccarino and Musk, multiple people said.
The shake-up was seen as a boon for British-born Pickles, who once ran for the office of Conservative MP in the UK before quickly rising through the ranks of the platform to oversee its public policy and government relations.
The realignment comes amid growing tension between Musk and Yaccarino, stemming from her efforts to keep X financially healthy a year after Musk poached her from NBCUniversal.
One of X’s executives said she grew increasingly nervous as Musk piled pressure on her to increase revenue and cut expenses — for example, by laying off staff from sales teams in the U.S. and U.K. and cutting spending on items like travel.
Another said some of the recent staff losses were related to regular performance management reviews. At a meeting this month, Yaccarino said the focus would be on “performance management,” company insiders said.
At the same time as Yaccarino’s change, billionaire Steve Davis, a longtime Musk ally and chief executive of his Boring Company, was brought in in April to review X’s finances as well as performance management, two people familiar with the matter said. .
Davis has been evaluating cuts, one person said, and is targeting dozens of jobs, another added. Some saw the move as a sign of continued concerns about the platform’s finances.
Davis, an aerospace expert, previously helped lead cost-cutting efforts at X in late 2022 and early 2023 following its acquisition, making decisions about job cuts, cutting day-to-day expenses and renegotiating contracts and data licensing policies in society. .
Those efforts prompted speculation that he might be in the running for the CEO job after Musk bought X, then known as Twitter, and fired its then-CEO.
Two people familiar with Yaccarino’s thinking said she sees him as a threat to her authority. Davis’ wife also works at X and is responsible for the platform’s real estate strategy, another person said.
Davis’ new duties were first reported by the Verge.
Musk and Yaccarino have been trying to personally woo ad and brand chiefs in Cannes this week after groups such as Disney, IBM and Apple pulled spending from the platform over concerns about content moderation as well as Musk’s provocative leadership style and contributions. .
X executives said more than 60 percent of brands that had suspended advertising had resumed — albeit in small ways — in recent months.
One person familiar with conversations between Musk and advertisers said X management would like to emphasize that the platform is safe for brands, as well as highlight new features such as video and targeted marketing. However, some Cannes advertising chiefs told the Financial Times that the site was not on their “preferred” lists of channels to use with their brand clients.
X and Musk did not respond to requests for comment. Benarroch, whose departure was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, did not respond to requests for comment.