Elon Musk confirmed he will step down as chief executive officer of Twitter Inc. after finding a successor, though he plans to retain control over the company’s engineering teams.
Since taking over in October, Musk has overseen the firings or departures of roughly 5,000 of Twitter’s 7,500 employees. He’s said he plans to emphasize Twitter’s engineering as owner, and it’s hard to tell what’s left of other operations, such as legal and finance after the departures.
The billionaire executive embarked on a search for a new CEO, according to a person familiar with the search, after losing a straw poll he posted on the social media site that asked whether he should relinquish his role as head of the company.
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More than 10 million votes, or 57.5%, were in favor of Musk stepping down, according to results that came in Monday morning. Musk committed to abide by the results when he launched the survey, but a day later he had tweeted more than a dozen times without directly addressing the outcome. The search for a new CEO could be drawn out and take time to yield results, said the person, who asked for anonymity discussing a private matter.
