Linda Yaccarino says the 'intense and relentless public scrutiny' of leading X 'weighs' on her
- Linda Yaccarino says she was not ready for the "relentless public scrutiny" that comes with helming X.
- "I don't know if any human being could anticipate or prepare for that," Yaccarino told the FT.
Linda Yaccarino says she wasn't prepared for the heightened public scrutiny that came with running X, the company previously known as Twitter.
The 59-year-old X CEO told the Financial Times in a story published on Wednesday that the heat she's been getting has been "hard" to manage.
"The thing that weighs on me a great deal is the pressure and the burden of the intense and relentless public scrutiny," Yaccarino told the Financial Times. "I don't know if any human being could anticipate or prepare for that."
"It's hard on me. It's hard on my family, my children, my parents, and that, I would say, in the first 100 days is a continual learning process to balance that," she continued.
Yaccarino told the Financial Times that the pressure she now faces is much higher than in her previous roles.
"While I did have a very outward-facing or high-profile role in my last job, certainly the intensity is very different," she said. "That hits big."
X's owner, Elon Musk, named the former NBCUniversal executive CEO in May. Her appointment coincides with a period of great turmoil for the social media platform — Musk has laid off nearly 90% of employees since taking over the company in October.
Yaccarino now has the task of boosting X's advertising revenues. In July, Musk said in a post on X that the company experienced a 50% drop in advertising revenue.
"We're still negative cash flow, due to ~50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load," Musk wrote. "Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else."
Representatives for X did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.