Why Twitter’s C.E.O. Demoted Himself | Hacker News Reader

Why Twitter’s C.E.O. Demoted Himself

nytimes.com

64 pointspkaler11 comments

I thought the reason why people left the SXSW interview was because the interviewer was a giant, self-absorbed douche who gave Ev little time to speak and/or didn't do a good job of facilitating.

Interviwer: Ev, I've read that Twitter is being used by dissidents abroad to drum up support for their causes and bring them together, giving us yet another example of social media being used for guerilla political purposes. Is this true?

Ev: I think so.

And on and on and on...

This may end up being a wise choice for the company (I think Ev is happier now), but you don't have to be a detail-oriented leader to be a great CEO. You just have to be great at finding people who complement your strengths and weaknesses as a leader.

There is no perfect CEO, so Ev's situation shouldn't apply to everyone. Zuck kept power as CEO and has done an extraordinary job. Larry and Sergey created a triumvirate for the big decisions, and that's worked out quite well as well.

So looking at this from a scientific perspective, essentially anybody can be a CEO (memories of that classic Dan Ackroyd/Eddie Murphy movie "Trading Places" comes to mind).

Scientifically any theory about Zuck doing an "extraordinary job" is non-falsifiable.

Why then should we read the innumerable puff pieces about why one person should be CEO and another person COO?

They hired a great CEO in Dick Costolo, gave him time to prove himself within Twitter as COO, then promoted him to CEO. This may have been thought out for quite a while in advance.

“Ev is very difficult to work with because he has a tough time making a final decision on products,”

“This all changed when Dick took over. He’s very logical and knows how to make things happen.”

“Dick is hard-charging and very focused on urgency and executing now, and I tend to be very contemplative,” he says. “My weakness is probably taking too long to make a decision, and his is being too hasty.”

Speaking to a group of new hires at an orientation session last spring, Mr. Williams said Twitter had three goals: to change the world, to build a business and to have fun.

I see Union Square in the Crunchbase profile for Twitter (http://www.crunchbase.com/company/twitter) but I also see Morgan Stanley and T. Rowe Price. This leads me to ask: How well or how poorly do the goals of VCs and angels align with those of the founders? VCs have a responsibility to deliver a return to their investors -- what implications does that have for operating a company when a founder states that he wants to change the world or build a legitimate business or have fun?

I suspect world-changing companies tend to be worth a lot to their VCs, Napster notwithstanding.

argh... I have to register to read article. I'll just open the paper to read the piece.

If you do a search for the article (any NYT article) on Google and click through no forced registration is shown.

Or just clear the NYT cookie

Reply on news.ycombinator.com