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!
TransplantedSconie@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Drops a nuke on their stock
“Well, guess my work is done. I’ll take my $400 million golden parachute and just step over the pieces of my broken company as I shuffle out to my car. Peace, bro.”
baldingpudenda@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Then 6 months later gets a VP job somewhere else because he “has experience” all the while eyeing another run at CEO.
TornadoRex@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Nah once they’re CEOs they’re good. They just go sit on various boards making millions for doing relatively nothing.
db2@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
Someone find out if he or his family sold stock before the drop.
Klaymore@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
I’ve heard he sold some stock but it was like a recurring sell-this-much-every-this-often type of thing so it wasn’t out of the ordinary is what I heard.
merc@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
I’m not sure if it’s an accident, but the value of $400m is exactly how much private equity firm Silver Lake invested in them in 2017. They were backed by a lot of private equity and VC money before they had an IPO.
Unity IPO’d 3 years ago in Sept 2020 at $52 per share, they’re now at $30/share, and have been under $50/share since May. The chairman of the board, Roelof Frederik Botha, is a partner at Sequoia Capital.
This is a business run by VC / PE people, that’s doing shitty in the market, and was doing badly before this whole license fee event. It’s not going to come to its senses and start behaving well just because the scapegoat CEO is gone. They need to juice their revenue streams to make investors happy, because it’s worth significantly less than it was at the IPO.
I just hope nobody is saying “Yay, now that the evil CEO is gone, Unity will be good again.” Anybody thinking that is just setting themselves up for whatever the company does next to juice their failing stock price.
GBU_28@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Hmm can he exercise his stock at a lower rate now?
Then, with the assumption that the company adjusts in the coming years, sell for profit?