[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.

[EpicEng]

>I don't think you have any facts to validate that either.

You're right; I don't have facts to fight your non-facts aside from the facts which have already been stated which show that your facts were non-facts to begin with.

As an aside, you have no facts to disprove the existence of the abominable snowman.

[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.