John Riccitiello, CEO of Unity, the company whose 3D game engine had recently seen backlash from developers over proposed fee structures, will retire as CEO, president, and board chairman at the company, according to a press release issued late on a Monday afternoon, one many observe as a holiday.
Pisses me off that CEOs never get fired for their bullshit and get to “retire” or “resign” like they didn’t just make the most boneheaded decision that severely hurt the company.
There really needs to be some organizational structure where the CEOs have the power to make the decisions they make, but the employees have the power to punish and fire them when they do shit like this. No golden parachutes for them!
This is actually wrong. There’s a near 100% chance that the decision was made by the board, and also the decision to remove the CEO. So we’re talking about the fall guy, but being an insider, the fall guy will get a tidy sum for the dive
Then the CEO can be recycled to some other project, and a new CEO instated at Unity, so they can pivot or double down with no moral dilemma. In reality, the board was there all along and it’s all a big PR game
Also if we’re talking about avoiding responsibility cause of privilege then the boards of companies are the topic.
The C suite are just managers, usually wealthy from their own career rather than heritage. Board people are almost all old wealth, a parasitic race of nepo babies who ruin everything.
Yeah man, the hubris it takes to meet only a few times a year, but imagine that you have the elite wisdom needed make all the decisions. You’re the guy on the board, so by definition you must be smarter than the worker bees, huh?
CEO may have even wanted to leave anyway before the announcement and agreed to make this unpopular announcement knowing that he’d take the bad blood with him when he left.
Maybe, but I’m betting that the CEO who floated the idea that FPS players would be willing to pay per-reload didn’t push back too hard against the board’s ideas.
Unity is a public company. Look at their share price:
https://yhoo.it/3ZNqeJJ
The company IPO’d 3 years ago at $52 a share, it tanked in late 2021, and since then has been way below the IPO price. Non-investors only started paying attention in September when they came up with their ludicrous licensing fees. But, for investors what mattered was the way their investment cratered in late 2021 / early 2022.
The investors want returns. This isn’t going to be a matter of finding a good CEO who can treat gamers and the gaming industry right. That kind of CEO isn’t going to get the investors back to $175 a share. The board is going to demand someone who finds a new way to tap new revenue streams, even if it makes people miserable. This one particular gambit failed, but the board isn’t just going to sit back and accept that the IPO price is too high. The chairman of the board is a partner at Sequoia Capital, one of the main pre-IPO investors. My guess is that the VC / Private Equity people didn’t manage to cash out completely before the stock price crashed. So, they’re going to figure out a way to juice the share price so they can sell, even if it means killing the company in the long term.
They obviously recruited him for the role for his great work ruining EA
Except that guy was CEO and board
Most CEOs are shareholders, this is nothing new or unusual
Ackshually!
Hey bro I mean no offense but there’s a typo
LOL, you’re not playing the game correctly! CEO = bad/evil/stupid, every time, always. They’re all worthless scum that never lift a finger and don’t deserve their job. (Mine’s great and does a fine job of leading the company. We make hella money, but never at the cost of morals, employee pay/benefits or long-term profits. He’s basically an alien. Apparently.)
These kids have never heard of a “board of directors”, nor do they realize the CEO serves at the board’s pleasure. (For those of you working your first job, that means the board can fire the CEO anytime they fuck well please. CEO, in turn, gets a “golden parachute” against such an eventuality. Ya know, in case they get fucked for circumstances beyond their control. Because they’re smart and negotiate the terms of their employment. Meanwhile, “How come my boss won’t give me the raise I didn’t ask/fight/learn for?! That shit should be automatic!”)
“Fall guy” or “patsy” is also a new term. Reminds me of reddit’s Ellen Pao. Board wanted unpopular decisions made, put her in the hot seat, she made 'em, fired her ass.
CEOs have contracts. At least in the USA, not that many people have employment contracts?
Yeah, it’s infuriating how no one talks about the board of directors for any big corporation. And the Ellen Pao shit was wild back in the day. I was there and so many kids and teenagers were throwing internet tantrums because some of the worst subs were being taken down. At least we have Lemmy now, it feels better to me but I guess people can have their hateful communities in the fediverse if they want
You’re saying the workers should own the means of production. Sounds fair to me.
They’re rich people and it’s not considered acceptable to hold rich people accountable in even the most trivial way.
The Rich only suffer under the boots of the evolved form ultra rich
Well, it’s only unacceptable to rich people who have the power to avoid consequences.
CEOs are beholden to the shareholders, not the employees
Employees should be automatic shareholders. Ought to be a workers right by default to receive some portion of the equity they’re producing.
Edit: And to be clear, shareholders win too. More companies should voluntarily structure themselves to grant shareholder rights to employees. Dumbass company ending mistakes are usually seen a long way off by line and rank employees.
But it should also be legally mandated structure, much like 401k rules exist now. I propose that all players involved are better off with such a rule, other than the (not currently rare) asshole CEOs who only want to pump and dump their stock.
Whoa get those perverted thoughts out of here commie scum!
It’s actually pretty common to provide employees with stock options. But depending on the situation, it can be a better deal for the company than the employees. For the company, equity is a relatively cheap way to “motivate” employees. For the employees, it goes against the principle of portfolio diversification: if the company does badly, not only is their regular income threatened, but so are their assets.
Yeah, most employees would much rather be paid the cash equivalent of whatever their stock option may have been
I’ve gotten options at the last three companies I’ve worked for and they’ve never been worth more than $5,000.
Unity employees are shareholders, but greatly in the minority compared to the executives. The C-suite is routinely granted thousands of shares while the lowly employees are given a few hundred RSUs every year, which vest over a period of 4 years. It’s kinda bullshit how little equity employees by comparison, but definitely by design.
They receive money which can be used to buy equity, no? It’s their choice not to. At least in a publicly traded company.
That point aside, I usually do receive stock in the company at jobs I’ve worked. Financial firms.
I don’t see why the shareholders wouldn’t want his head on a pike as well.
Yes, I understand that’s the current structure. I’m saying there needs to be a new structure where CEOs can’t make greedy decisions with impunity. Clearly the idea that the board is supposed to prevent that doesn’t work because this story is all too common.
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In a co-operative the shareholders are employees and associated members, and they elect the board.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumers'_co-operative
Not that Unity is a co-operative, but there is another way.
The only way this can be done in a capitalist way, is by distributing exactly one company share for every employee that’s not tradeable at all, flattening the hierarchy completely, and making every decision in a direct democratic way.
wouldn’t an untradeable share just be worthless? give employees stock options
It represents your partial ownership of the company and property
Or being a cooperative business.
Profit maximization and personal gain over the many is where cooperation goes to die.
Some small companies can do a good job, and sometimes bigger ones too, but they’ll be crushed by other companies that exploit their employees forcing them to do the same if they want to stay in the business.
That’s not just CEOs. All employees after a certain point up the ladder have to “put in their resignation” if they are to be fired. It’s a convention that saves face for both parties.
Being fired as CEO essentially black lists you from working. So they get nudged out instead
I mean, some people need to get blacklisted.
Yeah good, being fired from anything above an entry level job gets you blacklisted from similar level positions. It’s the world telling you, you belong at a lower level position.