[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.

[harryh]

It's important to note that Kristen O’Hara was also an outsider who is a "well connected, veteran exec." She had only been with Snap for 2 months.

Characterizing her as a "good employee, but ultimately an employee with no new insights or inputs" is probably not accurate.

[whoisjuan]

True. But I think the contrast here is who is more capable of adding value to Snap. The Ex-Time Warner marketing executive or the Ex-Amazon Ad executive. Profile wise they are pretty similar but yet they come from very different industries and probably have very different operational philosophies.

Also, 2 months is a very short time for everyone but Snap. In a 12 months runway, 2 months is 16% of the time you have before running out of cash.

[harryh]

I love it when people concede that a fact central to their line of reasoning is false, but argue that their conclusion is still true.

[whoisjuan]

I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not, but my core argument wasn't trying to say Jeremi Gorman is better than Kristen O' Hara for this job. I don't have enough information to factually check that.

I was defending Spiegel's decision (hence my devil's advocate opener) and why something that seems wrong for the general public may be what's best for a company like Snap at this point.

[EpicEng]

>I was defending Spiegel's decision (hence my devil's advocate opener) and why something that seems wrong for the general public may be what's best for a company like Snap at this point.

And the entire basis of your presumption was that O'Hara wasn't exactly what she is ("a well connected, veteran exec who comes from a company known for its operational excellence" who is also a new employee.)

Even if you were right from the start, you're just absolving a CEO of poor decision making. He didn't just "make a decision", he publically promoted someone to an important role and soon after changed his mind. Not exactly grand leadership on display.

[filmgirlcw]

Even worse, imagine if you're one of the direct reports or the teams below those reports, how confident do those employees feel?

I know that if it were me and I had a boss for two months -- someone I liked working with -- and we had a game plan and then my boss was promoted, that would make me feel relatively secure in where things were headed. But if two days later, my boss is no longer promoted, an outside hire is brought in (who doesn't know the team or the job -- and two months or not, that matters), and my boss has now left the company -- well, I'd feel a lot less secure in my job and in the company as a whole.

And honestly I feel for the new person coming in -- because if there is loyalty to O'Hara -- no matter how qualified Gorman might be -- that's an awkward staff meeting.

This isn't a situation where you had a few candidates in the running and one candidate thought they had the job and then didn't get it -- that happens a lot and that is uncomfortable too.

This is your CEO made an offer, told the staff, and then changed his mind. It's not speculated in the Bloomberg piece -- and this is total conjecture on my part -- but perhaps Gorman turned down the role or hadn't responded by the deadline -- then did, and Spiegel felt he had to undo his mistake. Even then, I don't know if that kind of about-face is helpful from an optics perspective or from a team morale perspective.

Even if this was the right move from a personnel perspective, it just makes Spiegel look out of his depth as a leader and manager. And in the case of Snap -- Evan is the face of the company and his perceived competency matters as much as anything else.

[whoisjuan]

I don't think you have any facts to validate that either. I'm just going by their resumes. One is a former executive at Time Warner, the other is a former executive at Amazon. This is likely another vapid and factless analysis but it seems that Snap could benefit more from the latter. Either way my original point was that it's hard to understand decisions like this when the company's future is at stake.

[300bps]

Your entire first post on this topic turns out to be completely wrong yet you act like none of that happened and throw out more non-facts.

[EpicEng]

You're just making stuff up and trying to rationalize a decision you weren't in any way involved in.

[steve19]

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.

[superfrank]

> A less charitable way would be the CEO is shooting from the hip and doesn't have a clue what the company needs.

- He continued backing the redesign long after it was clear the public hated it

- He continued to push spectacles and insist they were a "camera" company, long after the market showed there was no demand from it.

- In the last 5 years he's gone from insisting that snap is a "social media company", to "a camera company", to "the fastest way for people to connect".

In my mind, he seems like he's pretty out of touch with what the public wants from Snapchat and is just bouncing from one idea to another hoping to get lucky again.

I feel like he was a college kid who built an app that he wanted, but as he's aged he no longer identifies with Snap's user base. He's trying to push his idea of what Snap should be (because that worked originally) as opposed to asking users what they want.

[harryh]

just bouncing from one idea to another hoping to get lucky again.

Welcome to the world of social software!

I'm not convinced that anyone really knows what people want in this market.

[mbesto]

Hey, but he's a product genius no?

https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q=evan+spiegel+%22pro...

[bsg75]

> he was a college kid who built an app that he wanted

But not a leader of a large organization. That takes experience gained from multiple stages of a career. It is more than luck and timing.

[on_and_off]

wow this sounds familiar ..

I have worked on such a redesign of a crucial part of a popular service.

Thankfully this was killed before it was launched to everybody.

Basically as soon as the first working prototypes were out, nobody could say with a straight face that this was ever going to go well.

[notyourday]

He is simply refusing to accept that water is wet -- SNAP is a cam show company. The one that is very successful in that market without even trying - it does not provide payments, subscription management, or fine grained permissions. If they are to add those three they would squash their competitors like a bug and probably eat the OTT market as well.

[gammateam]

he knows what the company needs: a story that last long enough for his equity sales program to complete.

and that is exactly what he is doing.

[darkerside]

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.

[sampl]

Exactly. The issue isn't that he made a choice, it's that he made a different choice first--not too long ago--and made it public.

Sure, walk back a commitment if it's the right thing to do--but your employees/investors will be right to ask why you made the commitment in the first place.

[gonehome]

I think you're probably right, but I'd be very surprised if Snap survives - they've been outplayed by Facebook and Zuckerberg is a better CEO.

If you're looking for a stock to short Snap seems like a good choice - I'd bet on failure in a few years or some sad acquisition on poor terms.

The only other tech company I'm pretty confident will fail is Magic Leap, but unfortunately they're private so hard to bet against.

[seibelj]

I’ve made a good amount of cash shorting SNAP, I can’t understand who is buying when they have provided guidance of decreasing DAU’s for at least one more quarter. I hope employees at SNAP are negotiating more stock or salary, they could do so much better at other firms.

[klodolph]

Some of them are doing much better at other firms... from what I hear, leaving for SNAP and then coming back two years later at level N+2.

[jowiar]

Yeah -- I bought some puts at 5 expiring in January for a nickel apiece in August... It was pretty obvious there was nothing there and would drop like a stone -- the question was when the market would wake up. I honestly don't understand what the longs are betting on here, either.

[mrep]

Someone in my building has a magic leap and I got to try it yesterday and it was pretty impressive. We played angry birds and you could walk around the bird structure shooting birds at it and it perfectly tracked everything.

Granted I haven't tried any other AR or VR device but combine that with some CAD software, google assistant, and some leap motion style hand tracking and you're now Tony Stark building iron man.

[gonehome]

I played with one too, but my take away was the opposite.

- It was dark, it looked like I was looking at a screen with sunglasses to the outside world.

- It didn't feel like I was looking at things in the real world.

- The FOV was pretty poor, I could see the edges on the sides and above.

- The battery life was short and the device was expensive.

Successful AR has obvious applications and will be huge, but the Magic Leap device falls way short of the hype [1] and I'm not convinced they'll be the ones to pull it off.

If you have a chance you should try VR (like the HTC Vive) - current VR is actually impressive.

[1] https://twitter.com/fernandojsg/status/1017411969169555457

[nwsm]

Sure, let's say this new decision is the actual right one to make. It took him only two days to realize his mistake. What could he realize in two days that he couldn't in the (hopefully) weeks it took him to make the initial decision? Either they weren't diligent enough in making the initial decision, or they didn't like how someone (or their stock price) reacted to the decision and turned back. Both are bad.