[briga]

What are the odds that Zuckerberg would still be CEO if he didn't have a majority stake in the company? From the outside it seems like he has made one terrible financial decision after the next. Can anyone be surprised that things aren't going smoothly given his track record?

[ergocoder]

Given that he has been running the company for many years and the valuation/profit/or whatever has gone up 100x times, I'd say the board is probably gonna be patient with the guy.

Imagine the guy made you $1.4 trillion dollars but lost $14 billions. Would you fire him?

[carabiner]

I would.

[jjee]

After enough chances, yeah. Zuck probably has a few more big mistakes to go before the stock price is crushed and flat lines for awhile… in that environment a change of CEO would be needed.

[ergocoder]

So, no then.

But if he made X more mistakes, you would? Yeah sure bro.

[milesskorpen]

Facebook stock is up 6x in ~3 years, so the market does not agree with your assessment of his track record.

[ProfessorLayton]

And in the last 4.5y it's up 70% while the S&P500 is up 51% in the same time period, not quite as exciting eh?

[function_seven]

Beating the index by 40% after 2 decades as a company? Yeah, still good.

[ProfessorLayton]

Well we just went from "6x" to "40%" and "good" so, yeah... not quite as exciting.

[danny_codes]

Of course, Facebook themselves acknowledge that 10% of their revenue is literal scams. Like, people pay them to forward their scams to the targets of said scams. They know this is happening.

Obviously criminality pays. I wouldn’t hold up a drug dealer’s returns as evidence of good leadership

[dmix]

Some people in tech want companies to innovate and take risks by spending on R&D instead of just funneling it back to investors or safer existing markets, others will complain that they took those risks and failed despite still running profitable businesses.

[semiquaver]

meta is spending an absolute boat load on R&D and taking massive risks. It seems like your actual position is “company bad”

[dmix]

I'm in the former group where I personally support Meta taking risks on big ideas while still being profitable. Just like SpaceX and others. I don't blame Mark for getting excited about AR which is very likely a big market in the future, the gamble on the tech being affordable enough was just far too early for the scale of investment. Their investments there might still pay off as it gets cheaper.

[briga]

Astonishingly. I just find it funny that one person can be responsible for wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and still keep their job.

[ergocoder]

Because he made many more billions... Not sure why this is difficult to understand though. It's a simple subtraction.

[foogazi]

Pound wise - penny foolish

[mosura]

Easy: be responsible at the same time for tens of billions in upside.

Post VR it is not like investors don’t know what this is. Meta bets and bets big.

[gosub100]

I hate the guy personally, but still understand that at that scale, if the leader is so conservative that s/he never risks losing, they are already losing. Like airline manufacturers never investing in jets because early ones weren't safe.

MSFT's bumbling idiot Ballmer Threw away at least a billion on one of the failed early versions of the Surface, but it went on to be profitable (or at least successful with customers) later. They also burned billion(s) acquiring skype, only to switch to Teams. Say what you want about their terrible products, but somehow they are still successful businesses.

[carefree-bob]

Unfortunately looking at CEOs that don't have a majority stake but make one terrible decision after another (waves to Satya) I think odds are pretty good he'd still be around.

[em500]

You mean his terrible financial decisions of founding a company in 2004 that IPO at 104B within eight years, and now 14 years on is valued at 1.6T? Are we looking different track records?