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I'm confused on why he's leaving. Is the political scope of the role too much for him and/or is this not the role he intended to occupy?
by data4lyfe 6y ago
I'm confused on why he's leaving. Is the political scope of the role too much for him and/or is this not the role he intended to occupy?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ipnon 6y agoWhat's your annual rate for being caught in the middle of a geopolitical superpower dispute?
- jjeaff 6y agoA few million. But that number goes way up once I've banked a few million. This guy presumably has plenty.
- tomc1985 6y agoA few billion, at least for those kind of stakes
- coliveira 6y agoNonsense, politicians get into much more trouble for way less than that. He just doesn't know how to handle pressure - which is what he is paid well to do. Unacceptable.
- dcsan 6y agoit's a different role. he signed on to be a media exec and cut licensing deals. suddenly he's in the middle of a trade war and politics with some of the worst people on the planet. "fine people on both sides"
- Taek 6y agoI'll stick it out as long as you 10x my networth every year
- mongol 6y agoI am highjacking your comment to express my confusion about this dispute. Not that it exists, but on what grounds it exists. Has TikTok done something that is materially different and worse from what, for example, Facebook has? Or is it only that they do similar things, but they originate from China?
- ponker 6y agoTrump is down 10+ points in the polls. That’s what this is about and TikTok only needs to run out the clock to the 2nd week of November at which point this whole thing will go away for them.
- shrimpx 6y agoYes Trump is probably using this as political leverage, but the US being concerned about Chinese govt possibly spying on Americans using Chinese companies dates back to the late 2000s. Cynically dismissing it as a Trumpian fluke masks the prior art/implies there’s no issue whatsoever. Edit: clarification.
- pm90 6y agoThat by itself doesn't mean that decision making in this case is not being influenced by political concerns of the current POTUS (rather than being driven by long term geopolitical interests of the nation).
- ponker 6y agoYes, China vs. the US is 50 years in the making, but Trump’s interest in the issue is 0% policy, 100% politics.
- bleah1000 6y agoI think you need to update your knowledge of the polls, as much as you may dislike Trump, he isn't down by 10+ points any more. Regardless, the media has convinced people that only the Republicans and Trump want to see something done about TikTok, but, in fact, there are plenty of Democrats who are also wary of TikTok. Maybe they don't want an outright ban, but they want something done. But since that doesn't garner as many clicks, there will be a bunch of stories claiming it's a bad idea because Trump did it. There are real reasons we should be worried about the CCP right now. If you track the news, you'll see lots of people being found to be CCP spies and charged. There is a big problem with the CCP having spies and/or people friendly to the CCP in government and academia. Don't let your hatred for Trump blind you to the fact that the CCP is rapidly becoming an issue.
- ozi 6y agobout 25 million
- ridaj 6y agoThe guy cannot have NOT known that this was going to be part of the job. There have been grumblings about TikTok for over a year now, and while this has escalated of late, it was clearly already a big piece of the gig when he joined.
- vmception 6y agoBeijing: Assuming Direct Control
- smaili 6y agoI could be off but to me this read like whoever buys us probably won't want me heading the business so better I get out now
- MattGaiser 6y agoI would personally be afraid of being declared persona non grata by other companies.
- benhurmarcel 6y agoIf I was paid several millions I wouldn't really care about not finding other jobs afterwards. You can retire immediately with that kind of money.
- ghostcluster 6y agoHe's only been there 3 months. I suspect there's a deeper story, but it's anyone's guess right now.
- thinkloop 6y agoThe stated reason seems to be that the role is no longer badass enough: > what it means for the global role I signed up for. > I understand that the role that I signed up for—including running TikTok globally—will look very different as a result of the US > We appreciate that the political dynamics of the last few months have significantly changed what the scope of Kevin’s role Not alotta scope.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ffggvv 6y agoi think he wanted to be a ceo. with the acquisition he could run the tiktok subsidiary of microsoft or something but wanted more power i’m guessing
- threeseed 6y agoHow did that work out for the founders of Instagram ? And even though the acquiring company is usually genuine about giving them autonomy often circumstances change and they need to be reined back in.
- thanhhaimai 6y agoIt's interesting that the "not enough scope" issue can also happen at the CEO level. My naive view was that CEO is in charge of everything, and thus have practically maximum scope. It turns out that is only the case for CEO who wants to stay with the company for a long time. For CEO who doesn't treat the company as their baby, they can potentially focus more on "building a resume" so they can move to be a CEO of a bigger company. My suspicion is that Kevin Mayer had no intention to stay with TikTok for long in the first place. He just want to demonstrate that he can run a global company, and then jump ship to some other place.
- echelon 6y agoKevin Mayer got passed over for the CEO position at Disney for an exec in the theme park division. From what I've read, this was somewhat unexpected. Kevin wants to run a company of note with global scale, so he probably thought TikTok would be a good fit. He brings lots of media experience to what is, from one perspective, a media company. He's probably severely disappointed that his incredibly short stint as CEO is being undone by US politics and M&A at big cap tech companies. Two major career opportunities followed by utter disappointment in less than six months. It's got to hurt, even with the amount of money he makes.
- deepstack 6y agoTypical CEO that just want to build their resume.
- umeshunni 6y agoThe most likely reason is that they are very close to a deal (to sell the US operations) and the buyer wants him out.
- ridaj 6y ago? It seems very unlikely to me that the buyer would want to create instability at the top... aren't execs typically incentivized to stick around for a while, to help transition post-acquisition? It seems more like he felt this wasn't what he signed up for.
- threeseed 6y agoIt's likely not that they want him out. But that he would go from CEO to a middle manager a dozen or so rungs in the ladder down from Satya or Larry.
- thenewewb 6y agoMaybe it’s just not good to be the head of Volkswagen in 1944.