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Comment by valuearb | Hacker News Reader

He released the information about the security failure (which occurred a year before he was hired) and fired 3 security managers because of it.

He just issued a new company culture statement (with massive employee participation) that eliminates the prior version's language that encouraged jerks, and includes the statement "We do the right thing".

He's been there 3 months. What else do you expect him to do? It takes time to acclimate to a new company. A CEO really needs to learn the staff, meet as many employees and customers as possible, and soak all this in before they start making big decisions. Being a CEO is never a "shoot first, aim later" type of job.

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He didn't fire 3 security managers. They resigned. That may seem academic, but I'm sure it wasn't for the people involved. If they want good publicity from firing people... fire them. If people resign I just assume it was because they got a better job (I've had a coworker pushed out this way -- the CEO just got another company to give him a better offer).

If you want to avoid bad publicity from 'fired' being in the headline, you also avoid the good publicity.

Did either of you read the story?

Uber last week said it fired its chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, over his role in the 2016 data breach, which compromised data belonging to 57 million customers and about 600,000 drivers. The resignations Friday came amid mounting frustration within Uber’s security team over Sullivan’s dismissal and the company’s handling of the public disclosure of the breach.

So he fired the CSO, and then those reporting to Sullivan resigned (The departures include most of Sullivan’s direct reports.).

>"So he fired the CSO, and then those reporting to Sullivan resigned "

Which is not the same thing as actually firing 4 people.

Did you read the parents comment?

Yeah, but it is pretty important given the context. He did fire the person directly responsible.

They were clearly allowed to resign. Three employees responsible for a major screwup don’t all suddenly get new Jobs at the same time.

"He just issued a new company culture statement." That's the funniest thing I've read all day.

Company culture (at least the previous, step-on-toes one) at Uber was heavily enforced; company culture as it is written down is also heavily enforced at Facebook (where Sullivan was before) and Google and most engineers at Uber come from either. Not sure what is Goldman Sacks (where a lot of Uber managers came from) written company culture, but there is a practiced version of it that is quite distinct (think Uber’s toe-stepping).

Dara did change the cultre at his previous company, starting by drafting a written document there too. Of course, enforcement is key and a longer process than publishing anything but firing a large number of managers will effectively change the culture. I can see how it sounds ridiculous for someone working at 99% of the companies where “company culture” is a cumbersome joke, but not in that context.

Company culture is not a joke at my company. Suggesting the CEO will start to change the culture with a memo would be. But, when your employees can’t afford to buy their options and have golden handcuffs I suppose you make the koolaid taste yummy.

I had an accounting professor who liked to say “If you become an accountant at a company or CEO, you have 3 weeks to find the dirty laundry. After that it becomes your responsibility, and your problem.”

Methinks your accounting professor never was a CEO. It took me a lot longer than 3 weeks at my new job to understand the key structures in the application I work on.

Your anecdotal evidence beats out a professor, sure.

A professor speaking anecdotally, sure.

That's a pretty safe supposition no matter what he said. Risk preference is real. There is very little overlap between the set of CEOs and the set of accounting professors.

And yet problems that appeared were yours, no?

Yep, like a company culture they weren’t fixable in a couple months.

Maybe we have different expectations of what CEOs should do. Writing culture statements is not hard. Adding "We do the right thing" is not hard. That initiative also started before he joined.

Identifying and owning up to the 8 years of toxic behavior is hard. That’s what would stop the negative news cycle. It is definitely hard, but he gets paid enough for us to have high expectations.

Showing real leadership is hard, harder than worrying about the news cycle. Real leadership is not about flash, not about showing dominance, and definitely not about looking the part publicly.

Who knows what he needs to work on in his first 3 months? Perhaps it is important to listen and understand everything before making decisions, rather than jumping to react so it looks good from a PR perspective.

Writing any culture statement is not hard, but running a process to understand the organization, set a clear direction for the future, and then solidifying values so that everyone in the organization knows is not. Writing a culture statement is also not the only thing he's done, just something that is public.

On a side note, the second you say "lavishly paid CEOs" and "he gets paid enough", you bring a level of disdain into the conversation that makes it hard to continue. We should absolutely hold CEOs of large companies to a high standard, not because of their pay, but because of their position and the responsibility they hold.

Writing concise, useful culture statements is hard.

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