7 ms·

A definite improvement but the CEO needs to go. It's the only way to begin restoring long term trust. Developers & publishers are extremely wary of unstable bus

A definite improvement but the CEO needs to go. It's the only way to begin restoring long term trust. Developers & publishers are extremely wary of unstable business partners.

aeyes 3y ago
I'm surprised that this letter isn't written by the CEO, maybe the board is already in the process of axing the guy.
- eitally 3y ago
  I'd be more surprised if the board hadn't been included in the review process for the previous change.
  - Waterluvian 3y ago
    Boards are often presented pre-packaged answers via CEOs with slide decks. They are rarely given the flat truth about reality. Good boardmembers know this and how know to smell and cut through bullshit. Sales gonna sell.
jstarfish 3y ago
Yeah. An apology isn't enough in this case-- words clearly mean nothing to them. We were always told C-level compensation is as absurd as it is because they're expected to fall on their sword for fucking up. Keeping your position after defrauding customers is not a sign of good faith, it's just another [social] contract broken.
- tombert 3y ago
  Yeah, I really do not understand why these executives get such huge salaries. They get all the credit when something goes well (see: Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, probably a dozen other CEOs in big tech), but when their decisions lead to a drop in revenue they get to fire 12,000 people, get to keep their exorbitant salaries and/or stock options, and just blame everyone else for the problem, or blame a "bad market". I really do not understand what it is that they actually do, outside of being an extremely overpriced and lazy spokesperson.
  - Jochim 3y ago
    > I really do not understand what it is that they actually do Their main purpose is to occupy the same social circles as other executives and board members.
  - rybosworld 3y ago
    At that level it's often just a big club that you don't get to be a part of because you don't have the right connections. Many CEO's (and execs in general) are not extraordinary people in any sense of the word. I think people underestimate just how often a business leader gets to where they are because of nepotism. Many of the biggest companies in the world operate like a royal dynasty, with children inheriting the leading roles from parents. When you consider that decision making is often inherited, rather than earned, these displays of incompetence make much more sense.
    - tombert 3y ago
      It wouldn't bother me so much if not for the fact that they get lauded as geniuses for every innovation coming out of their companies. I've seen dozens of people on LinkedIn claiming that Elon Musk invented self-landing rockets, and they get mad at me when respond with "no he fucking didn't! He hired people to figure that stuff out". So I think "Fine, I guess you could make some kind of transitive argument that he hired the right people so he's responsible for the self-landing rocket", but in the same breath they will claim he's not responsible for any of the failures involved with his handling Twitter. Well which is it? Is this executive some genius pulling all the strings of the company and should be given credit for all the innovations? Or are they just idiots like the rest of us and like to take credit for when things go well?
      - DonHopkins 3y ago
        [flagged]
        tombert 3y ago
        At least on LinkedIn, people tend to hide their antisemitism and just wishwash it away as some nebulous, never-properly-defined thing like "bots" or "legacy cruft". I never used Twitter much, and I haven't used it at all in more than a year, so I'm somewhat out of the loop on what people do on that site, admittedly.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  >We were always told C-level compensation is as absurd as it is because they're expected to fall on their sword for fucking up. We were? I thought it was as simple as "big leader + big company = big money". Made sense in the days where those leaders rose the company off the ground. Not so much when it's just some MBA that comes in or a friend of some other rich guy that simply wants to increase stock numbers.
peteforde 3y ago
The fact that it wasn't written by the CEO is the strongest indication that Riccitello might be out.

A definite improvement but the CEO needs to go. It's the only way to begin restoring long term trust. Developers & publishers are extremely wary of unstable business partners.

aeyes 3y ago

I'm surprised that this letter isn't written by the CEO, maybe the board is already in the process of axing the guy.

eitally 3y ago
I'd be more surprised if the board hadn't been included in the review process for the previous change.
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  Boards are often presented pre-packaged answers via CEOs with slide decks. They are rarely given the flat truth about reality. Good boardmembers know this and how know to smell and cut through bullshit. Sales gonna sell.

jstarfish 3y ago

Yeah. An apology isn't enough in this case-- words clearly mean nothing to them. We were always told C-level compensation is as absurd as it is because they're expected to fall on their sword for fucking up. Keeping your position after defrauding customers is not a sign of good faith, it's just another [social] contract broken.

tombert 3y ago
Yeah, I really do not understand why these executives get such huge salaries. They get all the credit when something goes well (see: Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, probably a dozen other CEOs in big tech), but when their decisions lead to a drop in revenue they get to fire 12,000 people, get to keep their exorbitant salaries and/or stock options, and just blame everyone else for the problem, or blame a "bad market". I really do not understand what it is that they actually do, outside of being an extremely overpriced and lazy spokesperson.
- Jochim 3y ago
  > I really do not understand what it is that they actually do Their main purpose is to occupy the same social circles as other executives and board members.
- rybosworld 3y ago
  At that level it's often just a big club that you don't get to be a part of because you don't have the right connections. Many CEO's (and execs in general) are not extraordinary people in any sense of the word. I think people underestimate just how often a business leader gets to where they are because of nepotism. Many of the biggest companies in the world operate like a royal dynasty, with children inheriting the leading roles from parents. When you consider that decision making is often inherited, rather than earned, these displays of incompetence make much more sense.
  - tombert 3y ago
    It wouldn't bother me so much if not for the fact that they get lauded as geniuses for every innovation coming out of their companies. I've seen dozens of people on LinkedIn claiming that Elon Musk invented self-landing rockets, and they get mad at me when respond with "no he fucking didn't! He hired people to figure that stuff out". So I think "Fine, I guess you could make some kind of transitive argument that he hired the right people so he's responsible for the self-landing rocket", but in the same breath they will claim he's not responsible for any of the failures involved with his handling Twitter. Well which is it? Is this executive some genius pulling all the strings of the company and should be given credit for all the innovations? Or are they just idiots like the rest of us and like to take credit for when things go well?
    - DonHopkins 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - tombert 3y ago
        At least on LinkedIn, people tend to hide their antisemitism and just wishwash it away as some nebulous, never-properly-defined thing like "bots" or "legacy cruft". I never used Twitter much, and I haven't used it at all in more than a year, so I'm somewhat out of the loop on what people do on that site, admittedly.
johnnyanmac 3y ago
>We were always told C-level compensation is as absurd as it is because they're expected to fall on their sword for fucking up. We were? I thought it was as simple as "big leader + big company = big money". Made sense in the days where those leaders rose the company off the ground. Not so much when it's just some MBA that comes in or a friend of some other rich guy that simply wants to increase stock numbers.

peteforde 3y ago

The fact that it wasn't written by the CEO is the strongest indication that Riccitello might be out.