No women CEOs in Big Tech after YouTube’s Susan Wojcicki steps down

Susan Wojcicki had been leading YouTube since 2014.

The past week marked an important leadership change for YouTube, as CEO Susan Wojcicki announced she would step down, making way for the company's chief product officer Neal Mohan to take over.

Wojcicki led YouTube for nearly a decade and has been associated with Google, the video platform's parent company, since its inception.

Her resignation has larger implications for representation in tech. It has left Big Tech wholly under the control of male CEOs.

Men are at the helm of the Big Five -- Alphabet (Sundar Pichai) Amazon (Andy Jassy), Apple (Tim Cook) Meta (Mark Zuckerberg) and Microsoft (Sundar Pichai) -- as well as major social and entertainment giants like Twitter, Netflix and Disney.

Also read: Neal Mohan becomes YouTube chief: 10 things to know about the Indian American CEO

Experts have sounded caution about this skewness.

An observer told The Washington Post the departure of women leaders will have a "domino effect".

“As we lose women leaders, we also risk losing the next generation of women,," Sheryl Daija, the founder of Bridge, an organisation that promotes representation, said. "As we lose leaders that are people of color, we then risk losing the next generation of people of color. So there’s this domino effect.”

Recent exits of women from the global C-suite include Meta's Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Chief Business Officer Marne Levine.

Meanwhile, Wojcicki is scheduled to leave YouTube later this year, after helping Mohan transition to the CEO's role.

At YouTube, she oversaw the handling of misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic and dealt with concerns related to child safety.  She was also at the helm of YouTube when it rolled out its streaming television service.