Unity CEO John Riccitiello is retiring, effective immediately

Then 6 months later gets a VP job somewhere else because he "has experience" all the while eyeing another run at CEO.

Someone find out if he or his family sold stock before the drop.

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.

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.

red hat

Given their decision making in 22-23 especially, yikes

Gamers don't know who he is so probably better

Yes

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".

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.

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

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.

Crazy idea. Come up with a new products in your portfolio instead of milking 1 dry.

Burn the whole board.

Judging by those eyes alone, I'd say he's going back to the collection of dismembered prostitutes in his basement.

He probably has a dartboard filled with company names and wherever a dart hits, he'll go ruin that company.

Are we all just Waiting for Godot?

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.

That's not exactly an uncommon structure. In case you're just realizing this now: rich people are a bunch of corrupt fuckers.

Who wouldn't want to supervise themselves?

Well how else could he supervise himself?

"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.

I can't imagine who would hire him. He fucked Unity badly.

He didn't fail. He did what the board asked of him which proved to be more unpopular than they all had expected. So they gave him an obscenely generous severance package and sent him on his merry way.

He's been rewarded and they're just trying to position it so it looks like the company leadership gives a shit and won't try the exact same thing at a later date.

The problem is making it more shareholder proof. Enshittification comes from the line go up mandate. Unity is but a single example.

I also hope that they continue to be able to use that tool, but at this point, it's clear to me that it would be wise to start learning new tools. For me, it's not just that the company has made a mistake, but that the mistake was a repeat of a mistake they made back in 2019, which indicates that they may well do it again.

CEOs are beholden to the shareholders, not the employees

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