Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm trying, but I can't see your point. Company A doesn't have CEO. Company A gets acquired by Company B. Company B thinks it's a good idea for a company to have a CEO, and so provides an employee to take that role in Company A. It's not complex, not a coincidence, and absolutely not something that we should be worried about. It's striking that out of all of this, the new CEO is what you're worried about.
it's not a problem, it's fully what i would expect to happen in an acquisition. and like i said, Nat seems like probably a good choice for CEO. but it doesn't square with a commitment to keep GitHub independent from microsoft. if microsoft is appointing a CEO for GitHub, that's not independence by any normal or sane definition of the word "independent". "Microsoft made a good decision when they appointed a new CEO fo…
The first being that it's a better indicator of independence to have no CEO than a Microsoft appointed CEO. The number of good CEOs that have experience running companies with hundred-million valuations is very low, as GitHub themselves experienced for months. Without a good CEO, chances are GitHub goes under (somebody needs to push the Azure integration, etc.), so Microsoft didn't really have a choice.
The second assumption is that Nat will necessarily run GitHub from a Microsoft-first perspective, as opposed to a GitHub-first perspective. This may be true, and it may not. I believe this is what they were referring to with regards to "independence".
Please clarify if you're not making either of those assumptions, and if you are, I'm happy to discuss your justifications. :)
Edit: Perhaps you just have a feeling, given Microsoft's history, that they will sink the boat, and you're trying to justify it through anything that you can find that is concrete. Personally I don't believe that GitHub will stay a completely neutral shrine of perfection, and my only justification is my feelings based on history. So if that is the case, I completely agree. The idea of appointing a CEO where there is none being non-independent, though, is clutching straws IMO.