51–60 of 71 posts
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I mean, the CFO of GM is 39, Keith Cozza became CFO of Icahn at 27, David Knopf became CFO of Kraft Heinz at 29, Andrew Power of Digital Realty at 27
Those are some cherry-picked examples... definitely not the norm and half of those aren't even comparable companies
There's no obvious reason he couldn't do this job. Executive roles are very culturally sensitive, and this guy knows the firm. Given decreasing margin returns to experience, how much more experience does he need? The guy who turned around LEGO was also in his 30s when he took over, seemed to go fine. In case you're wondering whether I think everyone in their 30s can take a leading role, I think there's a fair chance…
The issue isn't that he wouldn't be great in a VP of Finance or Controller role--the issue is that he's been appointed the CFO of a publicly traded company with serious past, present, and future financial and regulatory challenges. And he has absolutely no experience dealing with the regulatory challenges, which is more than half of a CFO's job.
If everyone needed to have direct experience, there'd never be anyone considered qualified.
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I’m starting to get worried myself. Seeing finance people who would have to take responsibility for things like signing the financials over to audit leaving is not unlike seeing rats dive off the deck of a ship. Maybe they’re just tired of the ride, but maybe they’re aware of something the crew isn’t. Either way, ignoring that sign and making excuses because of love or Tesla is a bad move. A lot of major financial im…
In grad school I had a corporate finance professor that said when you see the CFO leaving it's almost always a bad sign. Finance guys don't leave when everything looks like it's going to be smooth sailing for years to come
/s
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The narrative that Tesla has a 'fleeing execs' is mostly false. For years every-time somebody lefts there are articles claiming that managers a fleeing. Overall however the turnover rate is not very exceptional and somehow Tesla still has highly performing managers after years of 'fleeing execs'. Tesla is continuing to grow at a high rate threw all that so its really hard for me to see this as anything other then nar…
https://twitter.com/IsFunkyMonkey/status/1090778355664805891 “To be fair, finance positions typically are the hardest to fill. With it being a new science, the lack of codified rules/schools, & the propensity for finance people to want to spend time with their families at every waking moment. Tesla's doing better than usual w/ retention.”
Finance is a 'new science'? Maybe if you're building trading algorithms, but that's not what a CFO does. And the thing about not wanting to work long hours is ridiculous when that's what every CPA is doing during tax, audit and earnings seasons.
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Yes, I work with senior talent all the time. Musk is precisely the bad kind of senior talent--imperious, oblivious, and completely unwilling to listen to advice from others even when he's been shown to be wrong. The senior talent that's spent the last 3 years leaving Tesla? They've got documented success at other companies within their respective niches. With Finance, especially, you want someone with experience and…
>Musk is precisely the bad kind of senior talent--imperious, oblivious, and completely unwilling to listen to advice from others even when he's been shown to be wrong. That's just like, your opinion, man. Steve Jobs was an awful boss to some, but a visionary to others. Same with others throughout history. >They've got documented success at other companies within their respective niches...The CFOs and other CxOs that…
It's really not different at all. Same rules apply. Only minor differences related to industry-specific practices, most of which effect lower-level (non-CFO) finance functions. Internal corporate finance/compliance is one of those areas where disruption is not a good thing.
This is a common trope that never gets called out when it ends up not being true. It only sounds good when a CFO leaves, never when the company they left doesn't go bankrupt or die off because they left.
You are missing a few words so it's not clear what you're trying to say. Being a CFO of a well-run publicly traded company is a very cushy job, so CFO's rarely leave voluntarily unless it's for an even cushier job or the company has serious financial issues.
Also, CFOs aren't responsible for the company's commercial success, so it's not their fault if a company goes bankrupt--that's on the CEO and COO. CFOs are responsible for tracking the finances of a company and managing cash flow, but they don't make the business decisions of how a company's resources are used. For a poorly run company like Tesla, the CFO's job would generally also entail juggling debt payments and incoming income to make sure their is always sufficient cash flow to keep the lights on.
WSJ seems like they try to find every excuse possible to pick on Tesla
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Yes, I work with senior talent all the time. Musk is precisely the bad kind of senior talent--imperious, oblivious, and completely unwilling to listen to advice from others even when he's been shown to be wrong. The senior talent that's spent the last 3 years leaving Tesla? They've got documented success at other companies within their respective niches. With Finance, especially, you want someone with experience and…
> Musk is precisely the bad kind of senior talent Tell that to the investors. He has made them a fortune in every enterprise he has ever run. What kind of senior talent would you want? You talk about documented success, but who has more of that than Elon Musk? It's a short list. If you don't like him, just say it, but don't make ridiculous claims.
Not even Paypal, where the technology stack came from Thiel, and the business decisions that led it to becoming the payment gateway for a generation of Internet companies...also came from Thiel. Elon's reign as CEO was a disaster and he was unceromoniously fired.
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Yes, I work with senior talent all the time. Musk is precisely the bad kind of senior talent--imperious, oblivious, and completely unwilling to listen to advice from others even when he's been shown to be wrong. The senior talent that's spent the last 3 years leaving Tesla? They've got documented success at other companies within their respective niches. With Finance, especially, you want someone with experience and…
Right /S Paypal, Tesla, SolarCity, SpaceX and still other companies in startup modes. WE NEED MORE BAD TALENT LIKE THIS!
2) Jury's still out on Tesla. All of their misfires can be traced to Musk, including their billion-dollar assembly line that couldn't actually assemble anything.
3) Gwynne Shotwell wants a word with you. SpaceX was nothing until she took over day-to-day and it's quite offensive to think that Musk has anything to do with SpaceX's success. SpaceX, noticeably, is the only one of Musk's current ventures where he isn't in charge of day-to-day operations and it's the only one that isn't a comedy of errors.
4) SolarCity was on the verge of bankruptcy. They were saved from immediate death by the Tesla acquisition. Since then, they've gone from being #1 or #2 in the market to a non-player; SolarCity now does less business than the larger regional solar installation companies. They're business is so bad right now that Panasonic is selling almost all of the output (i.e., solar cells) of the Gigafactory 2 in NY to SolarCity's competitors because SolarCity can't handle even a fraction of the supply.
And the sad thing is that Tesla and SolarCity would be doing so much better if Musk weren't in charge...like SpaceX, where he's not.
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Those are some cherry-picked examples... definitely not the norm and half of those aren't even comparable companies
But the claim is age means he can not be good, then when shown example of young CFO you claim cherry picking, but leave out the possibility that he could also be of the same caliber.
But David Knopf is also the exception that proves the rule--before becoming CFO, he spent almost a decade earning experience doing exactly the kinds of things the CFO of a publicly traded company would do. Similarly, with the other examples cited, they all had direct experience doing the things that the CFO of a publicly traded company would do.
But no one knows anything about the new CFO of Tesla. If he had been involved in Tesla's compliance or public-facing finance functions prior to this point, someone outside of the company would have worked with him and vouched with him. The silence speaks volumes.
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> Musk is precisely the bad kind of senior talent Tell that to the investors. He has made them a fortune in every enterprise he has ever run. What kind of senior talent would you want? You talk about documented success, but who has more of that than Elon Musk? It's a short list. If you don't like him, just say it, but don't make ridiculous claims.
Well, not SolarCity. They were about to go bankrupt and were saved only because Elon used Tesla to acquire them. Not BoringCo, which has yet to make money and is privately owned. Not SpaceX, which just announced massive layoffs (and which is also privately owned). Not even Paypal, where the technology stack came from Thiel, and the business decisions that led it to becoming the payment gateway for a generation of Int…