Under Musk, Twitter Now Looks More Like SpaceX.

"Elon Musk is increasingly remaking Twitter in the image of his rocket company SpaceX.

Mr. Musk is infusing Twitter with an intense pressure on employees, compensation approach and ethos of trying things quickly even at risk of failure. It resembles the approach he has taken at SpaceX, now the world's busiest rocket company.

Mr. Musk said Friday that Linda Yaccarino, a veteran advertising executive who recently left NBCUniversal, would join Twitter as its next chief executive. He said in a tweet that Ms. Yaccarino would primarily handle business operations while he focused on product design and new technologies at the company.

That division of labor mirrors the management arrangement that Mr. Musk has established at SpaceX with Gwynne Shotwell, the company's longtime president. At SpaceX, Mr. Musk is also known for focusing on the nitty-gritty of engineering: During a recent discussion of SpaceX's first test flight of its Starship rocket, he referenced tank pressures, "thrust-vector control" issues and related questions.

Mr. Musk has long said he doesn't enjoy the chief executive role and prefers to focus on the technical challenges of his various endeavors.

At SpaceX, Ms. Shotwell oversees daily operations and relationships with customers. She was one of SpaceX's first employees in 2002.

"There's no question that Elon is very aggressive on his timelines but, frankly, that drives us to do things better and faster," Ms. Shotwell said at a conference in 2018. "All the time and all the money in the world does not yield the best solution, and so putting that pressure on the team to move quickly is really important."

Part of her job, she said, was figuring out how to turn Mr. Musk's visions into reality -- and achievable corporate goals.

Ms. Yaccarino's background is now poised to play a similar role at Twitter. She is a media- industry veteran who has overseen roughly $13 billion in annual ad revenue and is known for her tight relationship with marketers and ad agencies.

SpaceX and Twitter had no immediate comment.

Both Ms. Yaccarino and Ms. Shotwell have reputations as being tough but congenial. That contrasts with Mr. Musk, who has gained notoriety for his temperamental manner.

At SpaceX, the work split has helped turn an at-times cash strapped rocket and satellite company into one of America's most valuable aerospace businesses. Closely held SpaceX doesn't release financial information, but the Hawthorne, Calif., company was recently valued at around $140 billion.

Twitter has been unprofitable for years. It is still valued well below the $44 billion Mr. Musk paid for it last year.

Mr. Musk founded SpaceX more than two decades ago, where he drove from the earliest days a culture of intense expectations for its lean staff.

When he ordered SpaceX employees to spend at least 40 hours a week in offices last year, Mr. Musk said in an email, "SpaceX has and will create and actually manufacture the most exciting and meaningful products of any company in space. This will not happen by phoning it in."

At Twitter, Mr. Musk's arrival last year as new owner has led to somewhat of a culture clash. Jack Dorsey, the co-founder, was known for being laid back. Mr. Musk, soon after buying Twitter, asked employees to commit to being "extremely hard-core."

Thousands of employees have since been fired, or left." [1]

1. EXCHANGE --- Under Musk, Twitter Now Looks More Like SpaceX. Maidenberg, Micah. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 13 May 2023: B.2.