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Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

bloomberg.com

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Re: Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

#5

Post by whoisjuan »

I'm going to be devil's advocate here but the CEO (especially of a troubled company like Snap) needs to take the best decisions for the company and stretch solvency and viability for as long as possible. Of course, it's unpopular to promote someone, then rescind that offer and hire someone else. But in this case, the tradeoff seems reasonable. Hiring a well connected, veteran exec who comes from a company known for its operational excellence seems like the right decision. It appears that this was a poor timing issue.

Maybe the handling of the situation was unprofessional and I bet there are ways to avoid these fake start promotion situations, but I think at this stage you gotta play your cards. Either you save face and do the politically correct decision (promoting a good employee, but ultimately an employee with no new insights or inputs) or you take a risk for the company knowing that you're about to make a decision that could be decisive for the company's future but that may have an impact on the impressions people have about your decision-making abilities.

Given that Snap is running out of cash and cred, I think it makes sense to do the latter. It also seems that Snap may be looking for a buyer pretty soon and some of their recent moves indicate that they are trying to create a story on why Snap would be a good an asset for Amazon.

Re: Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

#6

Post by zxcvvcxz »

hendzen wrote: post #4

SNAP IPO should herald the death of dual share class listings. They sold billions in equity to the public, but gave the shares 0 voting rights. So now investors have no recourse to push for changes at the board level.

How about Buyer Beware?

There's nothing illegitimate about raising money without selling voting rights. You want voting rights, want to play active investor? Buy another stock.

Re: Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

#7

Post by steve19 »

whoisjuan wrote: post #5

I'm going to be devil's advocate here but the CEO (especially of a troubled company like Snap) needs to take the best decisions for the company and stretch solvency and viability for as long as possible. Of course, it's unpopular to promote someone, then rescind that offer and hire someone else. But in this case, the tradeoff seems reasonable. Hiring a well connected, veteran exec who comes from a company known for i…

That's a charitable way to look at it. A less charitable way would be the CEO is shooting from the hip and doesn't have a clue what the company needs.

Re: Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

#9

Post by darkerside »

whoisjuan wrote: post #5

I'm going to be devil's advocate here but the CEO (especially of a troubled company like Snap) needs to take the best decisions for the company and stretch solvency and viability for as long as possible. Of course, it's unpopular to promote someone, then rescind that offer and hire someone else. But in this case, the tradeoff seems reasonable. Hiring a well connected, veteran exec who comes from a company known for i…

That's no excuse. If they needed a connected, veteran executive now, they also needed one when they decided to promote someone who didn't have those credentials. So this indicates poor leadership qualities in multiple ways. Not the least of which is treating a valued employee like garbage.
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