7 ms·

The CEO of Toys 'R' Us as of 2015 is Dave Brandon. He was the former CEO of Dominoes Pizza. After he left Dominoes in 2009 is when they started the "We used to

• bllguo 9y ago
  Are there non-cynical explanations of how someone with such a terrible track record gets hired? Maybe a dearth of alternative CEOs? Or is the reality as bad as it appears?
  • needsilence 9y ago
    I mean, it's happened ten billion times before, but if that's not enough evidence for you...
  • narrator 9y ago
    Who's on the board that hired him? Did they have a pre-existing personal relationship from a frat or something? Getting to the bottom of this would probably inform a good stock shorting strategy.
    • coredog64 9y ago
      I'm now pondering a "these fratboys are deleterious to boards" index fund thanks to your post.
      • ThrustVectoring 9y ago
        Bonus points for using social graph data for boardmembers and the fratboys they hire to front-run terrible CEO hiring decisions.
      • aswanson 9y ago
        The fratboy short. Hilarious.
  • legitster 9y ago
    There is something to be said about transitional CEOs who keep the lights on while the company figures out a long term strategy. Most actually terribly run companies don't just bounce back the minute they get rid of a bad CEO.
  • khazhou 9y ago
    Because even a shitty company-destroying CEO has experience being a CEO. Not trying to be cynical.
  • wolverine876 9y ago
    Dave Brandon had an exceptional track record and the business community thought so, maybe still does for all I know. He was just disliked by a popular (in the University of Michigan community) sports blogger. See my post below.
    • jimmaswell 9y ago
      What possible explanation is there for this post if he had an "exceptional track record"? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15280485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15280485
      • wolverine876 9y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15281139 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15281139
• dadrian 9y ago
  I'll also note that in the time since Dave left Dominoes, their stock has outperformed Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Apple, with slightly under 12x returns in the last 10 years. Since Dave left Michigan, the interim AD hired Jim Harbaugh, and the football program is now regularly in top 10 in the nation.
  • jackcosgrove 9y ago
    So now's the time to buy Toys R Us stock?
    • jandrese 9y ago
      He's not fired yet.
    • pmorici 9y ago
      Brandon is still CEO, might want to wait until after he leaves. Also wait until it is clear they aren't going to declare bankruptcy because that usually wipes out share holders.
    • acomjean 9y ago
      Its private. bought out by capital companies (Bain, vornado...) in 2005. http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/17/news/fortune500/toysrus/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/17/news/fortune500/toysrus/inde...
  • wolverine876 9y ago
    Brandon did very well at Dominos; Bain Capital, Dominos' owners, certainly thought so, because they later hired him to run Toys R Us. > Since Dave left Michigan, the interim AD hired Jim Harbaugh, and the football program is now regularly in top 10 in the nation. Harbaugh's record through 2 seasons + 3 games = 23-6 Brady Hoke, the coach Brandon hired, through the same period = 22-7. Hoke also beat Ohio State during that period and Harbaugh hasn't. At Michigan, beating Ohio State is almost more important than the rest of the season combined; ESPN called it the top rivalry in all of sports at one point. But more important to the University of Michigan than winning a children's game played with a ball, at least before Harbaugh and that interim AD, was the student-athletes' welfare and their development in the classroom and in the community. By those measures Hoke and Brandon far outperformed anyone. I know sports fans don't think about those things, but remember that it is an educational institution and the athletes are students (and if they aren't, they should be paid like highly talented employees).
• nicko9 9y ago
  It's high time people realize something about these positions. Being at the top of a gigantic mature hierarchy in a complex world is more a function of legacy than utility. John D Rockefeller or Thomas Edison were the single BRAIN that shaped and directed where their orgs went. Today's leaders in govt or in the private sector or more like a single neuron most of whose time is engaged in constant power struggles for survival. Nobody with any real sense wants to be sitting in these chairs other than the mindlessly ambitious. CEO's are propped up. Cause we are still hardwired to believe in kings, popes and heroes taming complexity we can not handle. With data flowing in like never before on the utility of these roles it will get increasingly and unavoidably clear in the next few years on the over importance we attach to "leadership". We are not on the Serengeti plains anymore.
  • chrisco255 9y ago
    Leadership is a thing. It really matters. An effective leader can be a force multiplier for everyone in the organization that reports to them, directly or indirectly. An ineffective leader can literally bankrupt an organization.
    • amrrs 9y ago
      No one could forget the force of Steve Jobs that brought back Apple and that ambitious Travis Kalanick who built Uber empire.
      • ianamartin 9y ago
        I would replace Kalanick with Bill Gates in this idea. Kalanick is a dickhead who lasted a few years before getting busted for it. Both Jobs and Gates really built shit for a very long time. You might not care, but the Microsoft empire was real once upon a time. Gates was fucking good at his job for his entire career. Jobs had some ups and downs in terms of results. Putting Kalanick in the same category as either of them is really really weird.
      • deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
• aswanson 9y ago
  Was wondering why Michigan disappeared from national contention in football during that era. Thanks for the explanation.
  • wolverine876 9y ago
    It disappeared before that, under Rich Rodriguez. Rodriguez lead Michigan to maybe the worst season in its history (2008), his recruiting was awful (I forget the number, but his predecessor and successor were among the best in the nation, as Michigan always is), and he is the only Michigan head coach since 1900 with an under-.500 record overall. He never beat either of Michigan's rivals, Michigan State and Ohio State, and earned Michigan it's only NCAA sanctions ever. Brandon fired Rodriguez - an easy call but one which earned the enmity of a sports blogger who loved the coach and maligned Brandon (which is what the post above is really about; see my response below) - and hired Brady Hoke. In Hoke's first year, they went 11-2, beat Ohio State, won a bowl game, and the team's defense went from ~110th in the nation to the top 20. Hoke did slowly decline after that, and was fired after an under-.500 season; his weakness was offense, which he just couldn't raise to an elite level.
• tootie 9y ago
  I just sat through a meeting with a bunch of high-level execs at a huge corporation. The amount of shrugging and barely educated guessing that goes into million dollar decisions is pretty absurd. The main qualification seems to be the willingness to make decisions in the face of uncertainty.
  • anitil 9y ago
    I have no experience at that sort of level, so can't speak to your experience, but being able to make decisions in the face of uncertainty is black magic to me. I think there is definitely value in being able to do it.
    • tootie 9y ago
      "Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite nerves and the mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous.” - General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord
  • kamaal 9y ago
    This is the reason why people with an engineering background, basic math skills and a spreadsheet can do a lot more with A/B testing than a guy who has an expensive MBA degree can? Also read this article: "The management myth": https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/06/the-management-myth/304883/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/06/the-man... In places where there is more than non trivial work involved in making crucial decision most execs generally tune and do what you just said.
    • nradov 9y ago
      Nope. Most of the really important decisions can't be quantified in that way. Any most senior executive do have basic math and spreadsheet skills. Plus they have analysts on staff who can help with the more complex math.
• Pxtl 9y ago
  Sounds like the definition of Kevin Smith's "fail upwards"
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• wolverine876 9y ago
  I'm amazed and saddened to find this written here. What you read in the parent is the content of a social media slander campaign from years ago led by a blogger named Brian Cook (who runs a blog popular with University of Michigan sports fans called MGoBlog), apparently because Brandon fired Cook's favorite coach. Sorry this is so long, but I can't watch a good person's reputation be slandered. Dave Brandon was a class act and very talented leader and executive. Note that despite the sports blogger's considered opinion (as paraphrased in the parent), Brandon's reputation in the business community is exceptional. Per Bloomberg: Brandon had run Domino’s for 11 years and gained a reputation as a turnaround artist. He helped shepherd the pizza chain, then owned by Bain Capital Partners, through the largest initial public offering in restaurant history in 2004. He got the Domino's job because Bain - no lightweights themselves - thought highly enough of Brandon's CEO performance at Valassis Communications to hire him to run their foundering investment in Dominos. Then Toys R Us hired him. How many people get hired to three significant CEO jobs? Why didn't someone ask the sports blogger? I'm no Fortune 500 CEO, but I know more about business than Cook and I was very impressed by what I saw of Brandon from the outside - a natural, thoughtful, intelligent, highly skilled, high-integrity manager and executive, the kind of manager you seek out to work for. Brandon left the CEO job at Domino's, a company with billions in revenue, global operations, and >100,000 employees, and where he was quite successful, to rescue from trouble the $100 million, < 100 employee athletic department of his alma mater - all operations in Ann Arbor, MI, except for road games. How many people would do that? He could have gone to another company (and he did after U. of Michigan). I hope he doesn't regret it. ... Brandon's performance: Before him, the athletic department was in the red, the football team was losing (both very unusual situations at U. of Michigan, an elite blue-chip program - like Google search becoming mediocre and unprofitable), and far worse from the perspective of then-Michigan supporters, corruption was brewing. Big-time college sports is a magnet for corruption, with billions of dollars tossed around ostensibly amateur sports, unpaid athletes, and mostly non-profit institutions. U. of Michigan's great tradition and culture, at the time, was that it's an educational institution first; it priorities were its student-athletes and its values ahead of money - integrity first and it wins: The football program is roughly tied for the most successful in college football history (with some parochial school in Indiana). Many say these things; Michigan really did them. Brandon returned to restore all that. He fired Cook's favorite coach, Rich Rodriguez, who was the only Michigan football coach since 1900 with an overall losing record, including arguably the team's worst season ever; he also was responsible for Michigan football being penalized for its only NCAA violations (i.e., college sports ethics violations) in its history, and was involved in odoriferous situations off the field. Firing was not a hard call, especially for a job among the most sought-after in football. Brandon put the athletic department back on track; he emphatically put the student-athletes first - and before the football fans, as he should have, but earning the enmity of many fans who could care less about the education and welfare of the unpaid students on the field - and he restored the department's integrity and profitability (which soared). He also hired a football coach with exceptional integrity and talent for mentoring college students (see Brady Hoke, below). Brian Cook, the blogger, is easiest described as like Rush Limbaugh; he likes to inflame his followers, who can be sycophantic, with media campaigns based on sensational lies and half-truths, and in my experience has few limits. For example, early on Cook disliked what a ~13 year old was posting in the MGoBlog forums, so Cook doxxed him, including his home phone number, and Cook's classy followers went after the child (I still regret not calling the state Attorney General's office). He lies brazenly: I once read a newspaper article saying a famous basketball coach 1) called the Athletic Director (the one prior to Brandon, who Cook also attacked) about the Michigan job and left a voicemail; 2) the coach spoke to his wife, who was adamant that she didn't want to move to a new town (coaches' families move constantly); and 3) the coach decided against the job. Cook quoted the article but conveniently deleted part 2 - in a block quote, no less - and accused the Athletic Director of losing the coach because he was out of touch. It was as brazen as it sounds. Cook and his followers also attacked, maligned, and sometimes chased out of town multiple coaches and other people. I'll add that Cook as no experience in sports AFAIK, either playing or coaching, or in business or in anything but blogging about sports at his former college. ... Regarding another person's reputation: Brady Hoke, the football coach Brandon hired, was (is) one of the great class acts in the sport. He put the (unpaid) student-athletes first, as students and people, and football second, and Hoke openly said it - an amazing thing to find in college. High school kids - and their parents - who decided against going to Michigan would talk about what a class act he was and nothing like the snake oil salesmen that populate the sport. The students he brought to Michigan - Hoke was among the best recruiters in the nation - were in tears when he was fired, and for years after that - when he was long gone and they had a new coach - you could read them (and their parents) regularly talking about what a "great man" (that phrase is used repeatedly) he was and how much he helped changed their lives. His peers raved about him, and the top coaches in the country wanted to work for him (e.g., the defensive coordinator of the Baltimore Ravens, at the time arguably the top such job in the NFL, left Baltimore to work for Hoke, then starting his first major college job). Unfortunately, Hoke wasn't a great offensive coach and the team was around .500 by the time he left. He was also maligned and attacked by Cook because, AFAICT, Hoke was Brandon's guy and replaced Cook's favorite. Sometimes, the Rush Limbaughs of the world succeed, the good people lose out, and the slander, sadly, follows them even to Hacker News.