Twitter’s CEO, Elon Musk, who also runs a number of other firms, recently posed the question directly to his followers: “Should I step down as head of Twitter?” His subsequent statement was, “I will abide with the findings of this poll.”

With 17.5 million votes cast, the people have spoken, and they have decided that he should step down in favour of those who voted for an alternative candidate by a margin of 57.5% to 42.5%.

Allow me to paraphrase Lesley Podesta, a former member of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council: “The concept that someone makes judgements on a company he acquired for $44b by doing a twitter poll is stunning.” That would be the case, but we’re learning that there’s literally nothing Musk won’t say or do.

As about Twitter’s Council on Trust and Safety? The group was disbanded by Musk.

If I could give Musk some advice, it would be to retire while he’s still successful. Except, he isn’t exactly in the lead. Despite his ebullient social media babble, there is little evidence to support his claim that Twitter is improving.

Extremely right-wing language, hate speech, and technological errors have been on the rise recently. And more than half of Twitter’s advertisers have left the platform. It wasn’t possible to win even the World Cup. Ad income for Twitter in the US was falling short by 80% of projections. It’s inconceivable that Twitter wouldn’t be able to monetize the World Cup in the same way that Fox wouldn’t be able to profit from the 2023 Super Bowl.

The new Twitter colour is… blue, right? I have a wonderful bridge in Brooklyn to sell you if you think that’ll make up for the loss of advertising revenue.

There should be no misunderstanding. The $44 billion purchase of Twitter by Musk was a bad financial choice. But now he’s destroying the company’s last remaining worth.

Irrational, right? Take a look at the track record. As soon as he stepped foot in the company’s headquarters, he dismissed more than half of the employees. I agree that the top executives should be let go. But how about fifty percent of the workforce? The company’s developers, managers, and ad sales staff were all lost in that calamity. Oh, and despite founding the business on open-source software, he fired every single open-source developer. Software development without developers is like attempting to operate a Tesla without a power source. Rolling downward for a time, it will ultimately come to a halt.

Musk has just terminated even more employees. Furthermore, not just any employees will do. He let go of members of the IT team who kept Twitter running just before the holidays.

However, that’s not all. Despite his repeated calls for all-out effort, the elimination of telecommuting and other forms of flexible scheduling, and the reduction of sick and other types of leave, he nevertheless managed to get himself to Qatar in time for the World Cup. What a hero!

Nonetheless, Musk made the effort to tweet racist and sexist jokes and memes associated with the alt-right. Following that, he purged the Twitter management team of everybody who had warned against the plan. A number of journalists have been off-limits to him, depending on his level of annoyance with any one reporter at any given time.

Musk is practically operating Twitter on a whim. This is a terrible way to manage any business, but especially one that relies on people feeling like they belong to a virtual group. To put it simply, communities are not a good fit for anarchy.

Tesla, Musk’s genuine crown jewel, has lost more than 60% of its value this year while all this has been going on at Twitter. Musk should stop wasting time on Twitter and focus on operating a firm he understands better if he’s serious about achieving his goals. What’s occurring at Twitter is a textbook example of how to completely ruin a business.