John Riccitiello, CEO of Unity, the company whose 3D game engine had recently seen backlash from developers over proposed fee structures, will retire as CEO, president, and board chairman at the company, according to a press release issued late on a Monday afternoon, one many observe as a holiday.
Drops a nuke on their stock
“Well, guess my work is done. I’ll take my $400 million golden parachute and just step over the pieces of my broken company as I shuffle out to my car. Peace, bro.”
Then 6 months later gets a VP job somewhere else because he “has experience” all the while eyeing another run at CEO.
Nah once they’re CEOs they’re good. They just go sit on various boards making millions for doing relatively nothing.
“I just voted to keep employee pay low. Now I have to go fly my private jet around to justify the cost of owning it. Bye!”
I thought VPs already didn’t really do anything, but being on the board and meeting 2 or 3 times a year is definitely less.
They just go sit on various boards making millions
I am become lizard, sitter of boards
Yup, my uncle was a CEO, and his monthly house payment is more than I make in a year… even combining my significant other’s salary. I do not like this timeline.
Someone find out if he or his family sold stock before the drop.
I’ve heard he sold some stock but it was like a recurring sell-this-much-every-this-often type of thing so it wasn’t out of the ordinary is what I heard.
That defense didn’t work for Martha Stewart.
Yeah… Except I heard he started this process to sell off most of his stock several months ago. His actions look a lot like “we’re going to risk everything and either increase profits or kill the company, either way we get a huge payout”
That’s odd. I heard he specifically shorted on Unity before he announced it and that’s some sleazy shit.
That would be a dumb move on his part. Stock manipulation that blatant would have the SEC chewing on his entrails in a matter of minutes.
The most likely scenario is that he was paid at least partially in company stock. This is fairly common for the C-level, because it allows them to loosely tie their income to the company’s stock price. When the company does well, the C-level makes more money.
So he likely had an automated recurring sale set up, to sell off part of what he was being paid. So if he’s paid 25 stocks per pay period, maybe he sells off 15 automatically and keeps 10. This allows him to remain more liquid (or diversify his investment portfolio by reinvesting that money into other companies’ stock,) so he isn’t keeping all of his eggs in one basket. It’s the smart thing to do, but can also be bad PR if the stock for your company tanks right after your automated sale goes through.
At most, he could’ve timed the announcement to happen right after his stock sale. So he can automatically sell when the price is still good, then watch it tank immediately after the sale. That’s not stock market manipulation per the current rules, (because he didn’t actually change how much he was selling, or change when the sale would happen) but it’s still scummy.
Hmm can he exercise his stock at a lower rate now?
Then, with the assumption that the company adjusts in the coming years, sell for profit?
I’m not sure if it’s an accident, but the value of $400m is exactly how much private equity firm Silver Lake invested in them in 2017. They were backed by a lot of private equity and VC money before they had an IPO.
Unity IPO’d 3 years ago in Sept 2020 at $52 per share, they’re now at $30/share, and have been under $50/share since May of 2022. The chairman of the board, Roelof Frederik Botha, is a partner at Sequoia Capital.
This is a business run by VC / PE people, that’s doing shitty in the market, and was doing badly before this whole license fee event. It’s not going to come to its senses and start behaving well just because the scapegoat CEO is gone. They need to juice their revenue streams to make investors happy, because it’s worth significantly less than it was at the IPO.
I just hope nobody is saying “Yay, now that the evil CEO is gone, Unity will be good again.” Anybody thinking that is just setting themselves up for whatever the company does next to juice their failing stock price.
Pisses me off that CEOs never get fired for their bullshit and get to “retire” or “resign” like they didn’t just make the most boneheaded decision that severely hurt the company.
There really needs to be some organizational structure where the CEOs have the power to make the decisions they make, but the employees have the power to punish and fire them when they do shit like this. No golden parachutes for them!
This is actually wrong. There’s a near 100% chance that the decision was made by the board, and also the decision to remove the CEO. So we’re talking about the fall guy, but being an insider, the fall guy will get a tidy sum for the dive
Then the CEO can be recycled to some other project, and a new CEO instated at Unity, so they can pivot or double down with no moral dilemma. In reality, the board was there all along and it’s all a big PR game
Also if we’re talking about avoiding responsibility cause of privilege then the boards of companies are the topic.
The C suite are just managers, usually wealthy from their own career rather than heritage. Board people are almost all old wealth, a parasitic race of nepo babies who ruin everything.
Yeah man, the hubris it takes to meet only a few times a year, but imagine that you have the elite wisdom needed make all the decisions. You’re the guy on the board, so by definition you must be smarter than the worker bees, huh?
CEO may have even wanted to leave anyway before the announcement and agreed to make this unpopular announcement knowing that he’d take the bad blood with him when he left.
Maybe, but I’m betting that the CEO who floated the idea that FPS players would be willing to pay per-reload didn’t push back too hard against the board’s ideas.
Unity is a public company. Look at their share price:
The company IPO’d 3 years ago at $52 a share, it tanked in late 2021, and since then has been way below the IPO price. Non-investors only started paying attention in September when they came up with their ludicrous licensing fees. But, for investors what mattered was the way their investment cratered in late 2021 / early 2022.
The investors want returns. This isn’t going to be a matter of finding a good CEO who can treat gamers and the gaming industry right. That kind of CEO isn’t going to get the investors back to $175 a share. The board is going to demand someone who finds a new way to tap new revenue streams, even if it makes people miserable. This one particular gambit failed, but the board isn’t just going to sit back and accept that the IPO price is too high. The chairman of the board is a partner at Sequoia Capital, one of the main pre-IPO investors. My guess is that the VC / Private Equity people didn’t manage to cash out completely before the stock price crashed. So, they’re going to figure out a way to juice the share price so they can sell, even if it means killing the company in the long term.
They obviously recruited him for the role for his great work ruining EA
Except that guy was CEO and board
Most CEOs are shareholders, this is nothing new or unusual
Ackshually!
Hey bro I mean no offense but there’s a typo
LOL, you’re not playing the game correctly! CEO = bad/evil/stupid, every time, always. They’re all worthless scum that never lift a finger and don’t deserve their job. (Mine’s great and does a fine job of leading the company. We make hella money, but never at the cost of morals, employee pay/benefits or long-term profits. He’s basically an alien. Apparently.)
These kids have never heard of a “board of directors”, nor do they realize the CEO serves at the board’s pleasure. (For those of you working your first job, that means the board can fire the CEO anytime they fuck well please. CEO, in turn, gets a “golden parachute” against such an eventuality. Ya know, in case they get fucked for circumstances beyond their control. Because they’re smart and negotiate the terms of their employment. Meanwhile, “How come my boss won’t give me the raise I didn’t ask/fight/learn for?! That shit should be automatic!”)
“Fall guy” or “patsy” is also a new term. Reminds me of reddit’s Ellen Pao. Board wanted unpopular decisions made, put her in the hot seat, she made 'em, fired her ass.
CEOs have contracts. At least in the USA, not that many people have employment contracts?
Yeah, it’s infuriating how no one talks about the board of directors for any big corporation. And the Ellen Pao shit was wild back in the day. I was there and so many kids and teenagers were throwing internet tantrums because some of the worst subs were being taken down. At least we have Lemmy now, it feels better to me but I guess people can have their hateful communities in the fediverse if they want
You’re saying the workers should own the means of production. Sounds fair to me.
Pisses me off that CEOs never get fired for their bullshit and get to “retire” or “resign” like they didn’t just make the most boneheaded decision that severely hurt the company.
They’re rich people and it’s not considered acceptable to hold rich people accountable in even the most trivial way.
The Rich only suffer under the boots of the evolved form ultra rich
Well, it’s only unacceptable to rich people who have the power to avoid consequences.
CEOs are beholden to the shareholders, not the employees
Employees should be automatic shareholders. Ought to be a workers right by default to receive some portion of the equity they’re producing.
Edit: And to be clear, shareholders win too. More companies should voluntarily structure themselves to grant shareholder rights to employees. Dumbass company ending mistakes are usually seen a long way off by line and rank employees.
But it should also be legally mandated structure, much like 401k rules exist now. I propose that all players involved are better off with such a rule, other than the (not currently rare) asshole CEOs who only want to pump and dump their stock.
Whoa get those perverted thoughts out of here commie scum!
It’s actually pretty common to provide employees with stock options. But depending on the situation, it can be a better deal for the company than the employees. For the company, equity is a relatively cheap way to “motivate” employees. For the employees, it goes against the principle of portfolio diversification: if the company does badly, not only is their regular income threatened, but so are their assets.
Yeah, most employees would much rather be paid the cash equivalent of whatever their stock option may have been
I’ve gotten options at the last three companies I’ve worked for and they’ve never been worth more than $5,000.
Unity employees are shareholders, but greatly in the minority compared to the executives. The C-suite is routinely granted thousands of shares while the lowly employees are given a few hundred RSUs every year, which vest over a period of 4 years. It’s kinda bullshit how little equity employees by comparison, but definitely by design.
They receive money which can be used to buy equity, no? It’s their choice not to. At least in a publicly traded company.
That point aside, I usually do receive stock in the company at jobs I’ve worked. Financial firms.
I don’t see why the shareholders wouldn’t want his head on a pike as well.
Yes, I understand that’s the current structure. I’m saying there needs to be a new structure where CEOs can’t make greedy decisions with impunity. Clearly the idea that the board is supposed to prevent that doesn’t work because this story is all too common.
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In a co-operative the shareholders are employees and associated members, and they elect the board.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumers'_co-operative
Not that Unity is a co-operative, but there is another way.
The only way this can be done in a capitalist way, is by distributing exactly one company share for every employee that’s not tradeable at all, flattening the hierarchy completely, and making every decision in a direct democratic way.
wouldn’t an untradeable share just be worthless? give employees stock options
It represents your partial ownership of the company and property
Or being a cooperative business.
Profit maximization and personal gain over the many is where cooperation goes to die.
Some small companies can do a good job, and sometimes bigger ones too, but they’ll be crushed by other companies that exploit their employees forcing them to do the same if they want to stay in the business.
That’s not just CEOs. All employees after a certain point up the ladder have to “put in their resignation” if they are to be fired. It’s a convention that saves face for both parties.
Being fired as CEO essentially black lists you from working. So they get nudged out instead
I mean, some people need to get blacklisted.
Yeah good, being fired from anything above an entry level job gets you blacklisted from similar level positions. It’s the world telling you, you belong at a lower level position.
Former EA CEO will be replaced in interim by James Whitehurst from IBM/Red Hat.
Is that better or worse?
I swear they treat CEO’s who tank companies like they do priests who molest kids and just send them to another place whenever they get caught.
That’s corporatism in a wider sense. Existed since times immemorial. It’s a systemic problem, that is, defined by architecture.
Corporatism like this is fairly new. Creating bullshit positions for your followers is an old tradition among kings and other rulers, but putting people from one leadership position where they fucked up into the next is only here since the capitalist class established itself after the industrial revolution.
Actually the former included the latter. So no.
The legal fiction known as incorporation or corporate personhood did not exist until the 1400s, and for the first couple of hundred years was used only for churches to acquire assets and land.
I think what you’re thinking of might be conglomeration, where one company buys every business in its supply and distribution chains. Such as when the Tonight Show and The Late Show are owned by the same people that make nuclear reactors.
That’s not what I’m talking about, I meant, say, helping those similar to you with the implicit idea that they’d help you too, and that being a common rule in a certain subset of the society, thus working.
Can’t remember now why I chose that word, “corporatism”. (Not important for the subject, but Knights Templar or any trading family or clan that would exist before 1400s can still be called corporations, same for religious sects.)
If you need someone to implement a greedy, extreme position then “pull back to something reasonable” (still further than original), he’s on the short list.
red hat
Given their decision making in 22-23 especially, yikes
but if they isn’t anymore in red hat so they didn’t take the 22/23 decisions, no?
That’s more at the feet of current leadership at IBM/RH, he resigned in mid 2021. The licensing move could’ve also been made and it just took a while to be official though so who knows.
Gamers don’t know who he is so probably better
People in software know who people in software are. Unity is for software developers, not gamers.
It wouldn’t have gotten nearly as much visibility if gamers didn’t know who the dude was
Probably hasn’t had a chance to fuck up publicly, hopefully he pays attention to the news and doesn’t want to be unpopular
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Tell me again why these hacks get paid so much for “taking risks” when they never end up being fired? I have not seen a single CEO officially fired from a company for driving it into the ground. They always “choose” to retire after fucking up the entire thing and collect a fat paycheck for doing so.
He’s been told to retire or be fired.
Being actually fired is not at all good for his CV at that level, hence he is leaving by “retiring”, a different process in legal terms.
That said, anybody with any experience with high-level management knows that a manager “retiring” after having made the kind of the decision this one did with the consequences it had, actually means he’s been pushed out, just not through the formal process of “firing”.
that’s why I put the “choose” into air quotes. It’s bs, anybody with a bit of info about the matter knows it but he still gets to cash out his boni because he has not been technically fired for crashing the company’s future
Well, had he been fired the whole thing would’ve ended up in Court as he tried to get the full amount of his contract period (so all contractually defined payments until the end of his contract) plus likely all bonuses, while the company would be trying to prove he was fired for cause, all of which would be quite a public display of dirty laundry, at the end of which one side would lose and quite likely and indirectly both sides would lose.
Meanwhile, he wouldn’t just accept to leave by his own hand “for the good of the Company” without compensation.
So that’s how you end up with him “retiring” (legally he’s the one leaving) with a golden umbrella (his compensation for doing so rather than drag it through the courts).
I’m almost certain that the Board fucked-up and don’t want to see themselves personally trashed in Court whilst the company tried to prove the CEO had severely mismanaged, hence went for the “give him money for leaving quietly and not involving the Courts” option.
Ultimatelly the ones that should be held to account are the Board who hired him and apparently were either directly behind that genious idea of screwing their relationship with their customers or were behind him when he pushed that idea out. This is why in another post I very clearly state that the Board needs to be kicked out to begin to start restoring the trust of the customers.
PS: That said, the system is broken, which is how the seriously incompetent Board members (as amply demonstrated by them hiring him and this whole thing going ahead on their watch) ended up in their cozy sinecures, risk-free with their backs covered using the company’s money, and also why he was hired in the first place with the kind of contractual conditions he got.
that’s why I put the “choose” into air quotes.
Air quotes? heh.
Being actually fired is not at all good for his CV at that level,
He ran EA. It doesn’t matter if he retires or is fired. It’s irrelevant at that level. Everyone knows the board said you need to leave, which means being fired. The only potential difference is final compensation. Future job prospects are not changed either way for him.
I suspect openly being fired would make harder for his mates in the boards of other companies to convince the remaining board members to hire him.
It’s not about competence, it’s about not having quietly stepped out when asked to (only CEOs that don’t quietly step out are fired, the rest “retire”) - you could say that the deadly sin by a CEO for a Board is not incompetence, it’s making a fuss when asked to leave.
Once you slightly climb the career ladder, vocabulary turns into marketing bs. Suddenly you most not say “problem” anymore. They’re “opportunities” or “challenges”. So at that level you don’t get “fired” because that would sound bad for the next company you’re going with. You’re looking for new challenges elsewhere. Leaving behind a dumpster fire like in this very case.
I mean with a company that big, they can just google you to see what you messed up
At that level cronyism is rife and merit is secondary to connections.
As long as he doesn’t have a big black spot on his CV, his mates can keep doing him favours using the resources of the companies in which they’re board members or similar and he will keep on doing favours to them in the same way.
It’s not by chance that in that environment there is a web were the CEOs of some companies are board members in other companies, whose CEOs are board members of the first company - or in other words “I scratch your back, you scratch my back”.
when they never end up being fired
When you’re a career professional, this is what being fired looks like.
“Choosing to retire” is face-saving language for “is being asked to step down,” which is sort of like the police asking you to turn yourself in. You can choose not to, but you’re still getting arrested either way
yes and that’s bullshit. They run a company into the ground, risking and often costing the livelyhoods of hundreds or thousands of employees and then take a fat bonus because, as you said, they were not fired, they were forced to resign. Sitting comfortably in their golden parachute they then glide over to the next opportunity to ruin people’s lives and days.
Also since you did not get that I was hinting at exactly what you wrote by using “choose” instead of choose and you seemingly not being the first person to stumble over that I have to work on my sarcasm skills.
They’d get paid severance if they were fired - it’s likely them “retiring” saves the company money overall.
I do agree that CEO compensation is insane, due to perverse incentives, but this seems like harm reduction on the part of the board
I do apologize for missing your sarcasm as well.
get paid severance if they were fired - it’s likely them “retiring” saves the company money overall.
Typically that is true but at this level executives have contracts with non-compete clauses and as part of that even voluntary departures usually come with a severence, since they aren’t allowed to work in the industry for 6-12 months after leaving (unless they negotiate something as part of their departure). It’s very likely he got a generous payout.
It’s seen as a necessity for protecting intellectual property and company knowledge that the leaders take with them when they leave. It’s why so many execs start their own businesses after leaving big companies but don’t officially open shop for a while.
It really doesn’t matter if they step down or are fired. The words are meaningless. They will still get hired to run another company.
It’s advantageous to have someone quit from a severance/unemployment stance.
It’s also why if you feel like you’re about to get fired without cause and don’t already have a job lined up you should absolutely wait for them to fire you so you can collect unemployment.
Yep they get all the praise when things go good. But shit happens and it’s lnever their fault.
You don’t get fired when you’re at the management level, you “resign”.
You only get to become CEO when you have friends in high places. Why would anyone risk the backlash for hurting you when silently letting you go with a golden handshake doesn’t cost their own money or at least a neglegible part of it.
I know but to the common pleb it’s still always sold as “well they get this much money because they’re on the hook if the company goes down” which, as shown time and time again, is just not how these parasites operate. No they operate exactly as you describe it moving from one opportunity to suck money out of the lower classes to another.
They treated a game engine company like a Silicon Valley startup. It’s a limited customer base. It was never going to scale. Dummies.
No way, bro, we just gotta get each user to pay, bro. Have them pay a monthly fee to us to play games, bro. It’ll totally scale, bro.
Crazy idea. Come up with a new products in your portfolio instead of milking 1 dry.
It’s a start.
Now do the Board who chose an EA CEO with his track record to lead Unity and stood behind this until finally forced by the consequences of his actions to push them out.
Certainly and after what happenned, merelly pushing out one guy in the nicest, most career protecting way possible, isn’t sufficient to restore my trust in Unity as a platform on top of which to base my business.
Burn the whole board.
They don’t make good fuel. Drown em. Takes less effort.
I’m excited to know where that money hungry pos is going next 🤔
Judging by those eyes alone, I’d say he’s going back to the collection of dismembered prostitutes in his basement.
Not sure if you’re joking, but people with those droopy eyelids tend to be psychotic
no, droopy eyelids tend to indicate FAS
According to least one study, a ceo is one of ten jobs that attract people with psychopathic tendencies, so don’t be too surprised. As it’s likely quite a few others are as well.
Other jobs include the media, journalists, surgeons, cops, lawyers, Clergy, and civil service
He probably has a dartboard filled with company names and wherever a dart hits, he’ll go ruin that company.
death to Unity long live Godot
Are we all just Waiting for Godot?
Is that… the guy from EA?
This explains lot!
Too late, I wouldn’t trust Unity from this point on. Spend tons of time and effort only to have it all yanked away. Screw that!
We’ll see what happens with Dyson Sphere Program. They’re too far into development to switch engines, and are still in early access with a technically “complete” game already.
Urrespective of all the other BS, why was the CEO also president of the board?
The role of the board is to supervise the executives.
That’s not exactly an uncommon structure. In case you’re just realizing this now: rich people are a bunch of corrupt fuckers.
“We investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong.” is a common sentence in America.
Who wouldn’t want to supervise themselves?
Damn this CEO is so good, maybe he should get a raise
I see you’re CEO material, interested in running Unity?
Well how else could he supervise himself?
Unity is dead, but at least one guy made it out like a bandit.
pops the golden parachute
“Later, bitches!”
“So, board of directors, you can force me to do any dumb thing you want, or fire me for not doing it? Yeah. Imma need an escape shuttle.”
“Fine. We’ll cut you a check for a couple of million if it comes to that. But we’re so smart, it won’t come to that.”
“It came to that.”
“Here’s your check.”
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Maybe the solution for CEOs that take the golden parachute is a literal golden parachute.
Abd what would you propose we do with the board of directors? Ya know, the people actually running the show?
Y’all are suckers. They put out a Judas goat and you eat it up.
No one’s saying they can’t also be dropped from a plane while strapped to a heavy weight. Planes are big, there’s room for CEOs and boards, and anyone else who promotes enshittification. 🤷♂️
The solution is to tax the rich so a golden parachute mostly goes to the tax payer. Including stock options.
They get a rucksack filled with gold bullion, and the only way out of the building is through the window of their corner office.
Times are tough, best we can do is lead.
Wow he only had to tank the company before his 50m worth of EA ownership became a problem…
Do not let the door hit you on the way out.
