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Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

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Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#81

Post by movingmove »

I had the "pleasure" working for Twilio for over 4 years. I cannot tell how much this showed me how you can fake it til you make it in SF.

Twilio tried to expand into Europe and failed miserably. Customers (especially German ones) wanted exact locations of data, exact routes of packet transportation, wanted features Twilio promised on Slides but never delivered.

I was part of at least 4 customer meetings (the biggest in Europe) where the clients just called Senior levels in and told them off.

Twilio was great when it just handled voice and text messaging. It never grew substantially, it never delivered features customers were asking for years. Messy code base, hired product owners with no clue what they should actually build.

Jeff was famous for over-promising and under-delivering. 1 year into my Twilio career, it was clear that the company would fail hard. Colleagues and I had bets on when Jeff will be fired or the company sold. Well, the last few months have been telling.

A sad story, since they had a great core product, really smart people, great people working there. But especially through the pandemic, they grew an insane amount without actually building anything of substance.

Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#82

Post by Moto7451 »

vehementi wrote: post #78
throwaway_108 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also why George Hu left Twilio. Because Jeff wanted to be a celebrity CEO, and it was to the detriment of the company. All of Twilio's growth (as a public company) happened on George's watch. I don't think it's a coincidence that well after George left, on Jeff's watch - they had to do 3 different layoff for a total of ~24% of their entire public company being let go. Note: former senior level Twilio employee, p…

Did any of those layoffs coincide with the global layoffs?

September of 2022, Feb 2023, and December 2023. So no, kinda, and no.

Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#83

Post by bwilliams18 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #20
pylua wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stock price has been lackluster unfortunately. I’m not sure as to why.

Stock price isn’t a great indicator of product quality though. Stock price requires endless growth which is unsustainable.

But it is ultimately what will result in a CEO departure.

Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#84

Post by jmacd »

throwaway_108 wrote: post #69
shakes wrote: post #38

I worked at Twilio for nearly 10 years and it's hard to overstate what a gift it was to work there and see Jeff operate as CEO up-close. He created an environment where (at our best) we could have fun doing work that had a real impact, and we could it with people we enjoyed doing the work with. He pushed us to be creative to authentically empower and inspire developers. Wanna build a video game that teaches developer…

It's also why George Hu left Twilio. Because Jeff wanted to be a celebrity CEO, and it was to the detriment of the company. All of Twilio's growth (as a public company) happened on George's watch. I don't think it's a coincidence that well after George left, on Jeff's watch - they had to do 3 different layoff for a total of ~24% of their entire public company being let go. Note: former senior level Twilio employee, p…

George Hu cut his teeth under Benioff during the most meteoric rise of both Salesforce and Benioff's celebrity. I would be very surprised if Jeff's desire to be a public facing CEO would even cause George to notice, let alone bristle at.

It's more likely that someone as smart as George might have just looked at the fundamentals of the business and decided it could not keep this up over the long term.

or... it might have just been epic timing too. Probably.

Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#86

Post by kfk »

shakes wrote: post #38

I worked at Twilio for nearly 10 years and it's hard to overstate what a gift it was to work there and see Jeff operate as CEO up-close. He created an environment where (at our best) we could have fun doing work that had a real impact, and we could it with people we enjoyed doing the work with. He pushed us to be creative to authentically empower and inspire developers. Wanna build a video game that teaches developer…

[flagged]

Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#87

Post by vehementi »

MenhirMike wrote: post #36
martinky24 wrote: post #15

[flagged]

If it was the other one, he'd be literally dead on arrival, so I guess that limits the potential confusion a bit. But yeah, I doubt he uses his full first name much these days.

At least "we" can reclaim the name, take it back for good, unlike the cool iconography and salutes that the nazis ruined forever

Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#88

Post by marcinzm »

throwaway_108 wrote: post #69
shakes wrote: post #38

I worked at Twilio for nearly 10 years and it's hard to overstate what a gift it was to work there and see Jeff operate as CEO up-close. He created an environment where (at our best) we could have fun doing work that had a real impact, and we could it with people we enjoyed doing the work with. He pushed us to be creative to authentically empower and inspire developers. Wanna build a video game that teaches developer…

It's also why George Hu left Twilio. Because Jeff wanted to be a celebrity CEO, and it was to the detriment of the company. All of Twilio's growth (as a public company) happened on George's watch. I don't think it's a coincidence that well after George left, on Jeff's watch - they had to do 3 different layoff for a total of ~24% of their entire public company being let go. Note: former senior level Twilio employee, p…

Being a celebrity CEO makes sense when interest rates are low and your main job is to keep convincing investors to pump in money. Of course when interest rates are high, and your main job is business and company fundamentals that's a lot less useful. I'm seeing a lot of startups (and public companies) with CEOs like that floundering right now.

Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#89

Post by gkoberger »

throwaway_108 wrote: post #69
shakes wrote: post #38

I worked at Twilio for nearly 10 years and it's hard to overstate what a gift it was to work there and see Jeff operate as CEO up-close. He created an environment where (at our best) we could have fun doing work that had a real impact, and we could it with people we enjoyed doing the work with. He pushed us to be creative to authentically empower and inspire developers. Wanna build a video game that teaches developer…

It's also why George Hu left Twilio. Because Jeff wanted to be a celebrity CEO, and it was to the detriment of the company. All of Twilio's growth (as a public company) happened on George's watch. I don't think it's a coincidence that well after George left, on Jeff's watch - they had to do 3 different layoff for a total of ~24% of their entire public company being let go. Note: former senior level Twilio employee, p…

This is a genuine question... isn't that his job?

For a public company, the CEO has to be a public CEO. Everyone takes on a different persona (some sell themselves as business geniuses, others as creative geniuses, and others as someone you wanna grab a beer with). Some really like it, and some do it begrudgingly. But at the end of the day, you can't be the same CEO of a public company as you were when you were private.

I've never known Jeff to hobnob with celebrities, travel in luxury or abandon his company. I'm not sure he's a "celebrity CEO" as much as he just became a public one, although I don't know him personally.

(FWIW, this is the reason I'd never want to go public. I personally don't like the system, but that doesn't mean it's not how the system works.)

Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#90

Post by caseysoftware »

I joined Twilio in May '11 the week of the private launch of Twilio Client. I was #18 or so.

My first day, we got briefings on what it was, what it will do, and then had to finish docs and re-arrange the office for our top customers. (At that stage, most people knew them by name. Shout out patio11!)

Since I knew nothing and the docs were.. weak, I decided to take out the garbage. I grabbed the bags and asked where the dumpster was. Jeff Lawson stopped me and asked if I had an office key card to get back in. Oops, nope. So he grabbed a bag and we took it out together.

So yes, Jeff opened doors for me. ;)

Despite the last year or so of chaos, he founded and built a company that redefined telecomm specifically and tech gtm as a whole. Not a bad track record.

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