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Bad tech CEOs all have the same playbook. Google “glass cliff.” Elon will step down and have this new CEO execute all his most unpopular decisions. Then he’ll s
by jimhi 3y ago
Bad tech CEOs all have the same playbook. Google “glass cliff.” Elon will step down and have this new CEO execute all his most unpopular decisions. Then he’ll swoop back in and be CEO again hoping to be the hero. Reddit did this. Yahoo did this. The lamest part is it kind of does help their image.
- nprateem 3y agoWhat unpopular decisions are left?
- closetnerd 3y agoYa I think he's actually unlike most other CEOs. The man does super unpopular decisions in front of everyone.
- gtweg 3y agoReverting to the status quo before be bought the company and limiting free speech again to attract advertisers. When Tucker Carlson announced that he'd post his new show on Twitter, Musk already sent a cryptic mail saying that Carlson would be subject to the same "community notes" as everyone else. We'll see how it goes, I'm just getting vibes that everything will be reverted to a standard SV company.
- nailer 3y agoThat makes sense - online raconteurs were trying to act as if Twitter had some kind of unique deal with Tucker Carlson, so reiterating that Twitter is interested in factual truth, rather than partisan politics was a solid response.
- fullshark 3y agoReturning verification back to the previous system and admitting it was a mistake.
- mbreese 3y agoDidn’t @jack kind of do this too? But it’s different when the founder/CEO is replaced only to return later. That’s a Steve Jobs play. When the CEO takes a new role, but still owns the company, that’s completely different (and certainly fits here).
- x3n0ph3n3 3y agoAnd Bob Iger at Disney.
- nancyhn 3y agoWhat in the world has given you the impression that he's afraid of making unpopular decisions?
- junipertea 3y agoNot sure you can do anything more unpopular than lay off 80% of your workspace, saddle your company with 13B debt and drive away advertisers only to bet everything on a $8 subscription paid by right wing simps. Like, what else unpopular would he need a scapegoat for?
- INeedMoreRam 3y ago[dead]
- supergram 3y agoTwitter has 400m users. At $8 that's $3.2b/month, $38b/year. This might be a decision most social networks didn't take, and an unpopular one, but if it works it can have massive payoff.
- zimpenfish 3y agoHow many are currently paying for Twitter Blue? Best estimates are "somewhere around 450k" which is $3.6M/month or $43.2M/year. Which is only $956.8M short of the $1B/year debt servicing he saddled Twitter with. It's a GENIUS PLAN.
- supergram 3y ago[dead]
- fckgw 3y agoIt's pretty clearly not working
- RoyGBivCap 3y agoBased on what quantifiable criteria? All of twitter's usage records were broken after he bought it. All of them.
- 3y ago
- pclark 3y agoWho was the bad tech Reddit CEO?
- pooper 3y agoI think they are talking about Ellen Pao https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Pao https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Pao Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_Ohanian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_Ohanian > [...] He was also a partner at Y Combinator. > [...] > On July 2, 2015, Reddit fired communications director Victoria Taylor, an administrator who coordinated celebrity interviews from Reddit's New York office. In protest, volunteer moderators of the IAmA community set their forum to private, effectively turning it off, and other volunteer moderators followed suit because of "anger at the way the company routinely demands that the volunteers and community accept major changes that reduce [their] efficiency and increase [their] workload".[40] The following day, a moderator of IAmA posted that "Chooter (Victoria) was let go as an admin by u/kn0thing [Alexis Ohanian]",[41] an assertion that was not widely reported on.[42] Media outlets such as Variety blamed interim CEO Ellen Pao for the dismissal. Harassment, which was already being directed toward Pao in relation to other controversies, intensified and she resigned a week later.[43] However, on July 12, former CEO Yishan Wong informed the Reddit community that Taylor was fired by "the CEO's boss" and accused Ohanian of scapegoating.[42] In the aftermath of Pao's resignation, Ohanian elaborated on his role in Taylor's dismissal, countering that even though the AMA/IAmA changes came from him, he still reported to Pao.[44] In 2017, Pao criticized Ohanian for avoiding the fallout by attending Wimbledon in the days immediately following Taylor's firing.[45]
- VHRanger 3y agoThen Ohanian went on to become a crypto bro and tried to force crypto monetization down reddit. Great visionary here
- xeromal 3y agoEllen Pao. She fired Victory who was very popular for running AMAs (Ask me anythings) with a lot of high powered people. The popularity of those dropped a bit after that and they were never the same. Edit: Someone clarified below that Knothing took responsibility for firing Victory but Pao definitely took the heat for firing victory on top of nuking several popular (edgy and outright bad) subs
- Dma54rhs 3y agoEveryone parrots the same glass gliff term they recently learned but Musk has actually a good track record putting women to lead companies and them very much succeeding.
- jimhi 3y agoBecause he has an outdated leadership playbook for Twitter. He has had a good track record and he also runs his other companies surprisingly well. I think this decision is set up for the new CEO to fail.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoWho are these people? What is this, a track record of 1? 2? This doesn't seem like the type of thing you can do enough times to have a "track record" of.
- hartator 3y agoSpaceX CEO should enough of an example.
- tomjakubowski 3y agoMusk is CEO at SpaceX. Shotwell is COO.
- jkubicek 3y agoGwynne was hired at SpaceX the year it was founded, so she's had ample opportunity to operate the company the way she felt it needed to be operated. Twitter is a well-established company that has been mismanaged for a decade and aggressively driven into the ground by Musk over the last 7 months. These two situations aren't even remotely equivalent.
- nojonestownpls 3y agoTwitter is a well-established company with a huge userbase and existing infrastructure. Gwynne was hired to make something out of nothing in an unproven space (no pun intended), having to build everything from the ground up (also no pun intended). Framing is a fun exercise, you can do it a lot of ways.
- sharkweek 3y agoHow do I sign up to volunteer as one of these sacrificial lamb CEOs? Because I'd absolutely love to fail at something and then get paid a bunch of money to look bad for a few months before people forget and I can retire into the sunset.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> How do I sign up to volunteer as one of these sacrificial lamb CEOs? Be an executive at NBCUniversal in advertising, Twitter’s revenue engine, and also be on their CEO short list.
- nostrademons 3y agoFirst step: get a title where it wouldn't embarrass the board to put you in the CEO position. This could be founder of a hot startup, or an executive at a competitor, or CEO of a smaller company. Getting there is left as an exercise for the reader.
- enumjorge 3y agoElon’s circle is lousy with people begging to be that sacrificial lamb.
- faaabio1618 3y agoHN is the only place where you get real answers to that question!
- mrguyorama 3y agoBe already rich and connected.
- lazyeye 3y agoI cant think of a CEO for which this comment is less accurate than Elon Musk.
- colpabar 3y agoCan you explain? I find these threads fascinating because seemingly everyone has such ironclad logical reasons for thinking elon is actually just a big stinky doodoohead. Can you try to convince me?
- antipaul 3y agoDid SpaceX do this? Who’s been their CEO? Edit: lol, I guess she’s the President and COO, not CEO. Dunno if the point still stands, or not…
- jimhi 3y agoNot the same. Hiring a female CEO can and should happen often. But when a company is publicly failing, this is a tool used by male boards frequently enough to have its own Wikipedia page.