"Work takes on new meaning when you feel you're pointed in the right direction. Otherwise, it's just a job, and life is too short for that." – Tim Cook
Linda Yaccarino had to know she’d be selling advertising that would appear beside Nazi propaganda and hate speech. She had to know Elon Musk’s incessant antics would continue to alienate the very advertisers she was hired to win back. She had to know Musk would never give her control as CEO of his social media platform X.
She also had to know this:
Yaccarino already had one of the greatest jobs in advertising.
She was chair of advertising sales at NBCUniversal, where she was responsible for more than $10 billion in annual revenue and oversaw all global, national and local advertising sales and partnerships. Among her many successes at NBC Universal, she was credited as a key player in the successful launch of the media giant’s Peacock streaming service.
But in May 2023, she left all this to work under an erratic tech bro, and this week she finally resigned, capping one of the biggest career blunders to ever unfold in broad daylight.
It didn’t help that as she announced her resignation, Musk’s Grok chatbot was praising Hitler and trashing Jews in posts on X. Hate speech was a problem when Yaccarino took the job, which is why advertisers ran away, and this digital toxicity only got worse under her watch.
This is now a permanent X mark on her resume.
What was she thinking?
“I know Linda personally, and this is her dream job,” Tesla bull Gary Black, managing partner of The Future Fund in Chicago, tweeted when she took the job 2023. “Sometimes the market doesn’t get it in the short term for whatever reason. Be patient.”
Yes, and sometimes the market does get it.
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