
CEO Update - turoczy
http://blog.zynga.com/2013/06/03/ceo-update-4/
======
dakrisht
I've said it before and I'll say it again, Pincus is the antithesis of a great
CEO. He's basically a scumbag.

He scummed (fired) his early employees pre-IPO, he cashed out $200M during the
share price peak and left everyone with 6-month options they couldn't
exercise, he's referring to hard working employees as "brothers and sisters"
in a layoff letter that sounds more like a blog post than a serious document.

This guy should be jailed (and Kleiner reviewed for inflating the stock price
of this company), he (and his fad driven company) are an awful example of a
tech leader and the tech business in general. He's screwed over countless
people, investors and the public market, while sitting back laughing at
everyone and everything.

It's a shame VC's are so quick to invest in the latest fad because of some
temporary "traction" for online games lacking any sort f substance and
basically being rips of Maxis titles from yesteryear.

I've sat in various lunches with VC's where they basically say to each other
"hey, we missed out on the Instagram deal, what are the other photo sharing
apps in the space we can invest in." It's frightening to see countless idiotic
apps get institutional money by basically making derivative products of other
crap apps. It's a bad cycle and it needs to end so we don't have more
companies like Zynga on the horizon.

But I digress, this guy is a major scumbag!

~~~
colmvp
Even if you fire your early employees, don't they still retain the equity
earned up to that point?

~~~
dakrisht
Most employees of startup companies are given restricted stock with a typical
4-year / 1-year cliff vesting schedule. Aka - they have to be with the the
company for 4 years to vest 100% of their shares (25% gets vested on the
"cliff")

~~~
greghinch
Also with options, you generally still have to buy the vested portion when you
leave, usually within something like 90 days. So you actually have to spend
money to keep them, and hope the share price goes up

------
gfodor
Note the contrast between this and the departure of Groupon's CEO:

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/01/g...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/01/groupons-
ceo-writes-the-best-resignation-letter-ever/)

Now of course they are about two different types of events, but this letter is
missing a number of things:

\- Down to Earth language: "brothers and sisters" (that we just fired) is
over-the-top enough to set off alarm bells in the first few sentences.

\- No self-reflection or accountability for mistakes. Instead, downsizing is
blamed on "scale" not meeting the needs for "leading on mobile." Nothing to do
with bad decisions or missteps made by leadership. So what "scale" is needed
then? Is Zynga going to fire people until they are a dozen people in a garage
so they can "lead" again?

\- No re-assurance that future downsizing is not imminent. No discussion about
specifics of how the evaluation of employees was conducted. No explanation as
to how or why an 18% cut is the right size to provide the expected benefits to
the company. If no other information has been provided to employees, people at
Zynga should all be in fear of losing their jobs based upon this letter.

\- Instead of explaining in detail why the downsizing is beneficial, the CEO
punts and says "But I think we all know this is necessary to move forward."
This is not a detailed explanation of the upside to the downsizing, it is a
jedi mind trick to cause people to project their own justification for why
downsizing was the right move. The only justification given for reducing the
size of the company is tautological: we need to reduce company size because we
need to scale down the size of the company.

~~~
hkmurakami
_> \- Down to Earth language: "brothers and sisters" (that we just fired) is
over-the-top enough to set off alarm bells in the first few sentences.

\- No self-reflection or accountability for mistakes._

I was talking with a friend recently about Andrew Mason, and we agreed that he
is probably a very decent person deep down, though he made his fair share of
mistakes and shady decisions along the way. (In terms of shadyness though, he
was for outclassed by his very sleazy cofounder, from what I can tell)

Pincus on the other hand, I have zero doubt he is a slimeball and hence the
difference in their communication.

------
wmf
I just realized that generic titles like "An update from our CEO" always
indicate bad news. When there's good news they put it straight in the title.

~~~
zackelan
I've gotten a meeting invite at 9am for a org-wide all-hands at 10am that day.
Always a bad sign.

Since I hadn't left for the office yet, I was able to quickly change into my
black "WTF?" shirt from Thinkgeek, and still make it in time to find out that
our VP and four layers of management below him had been nuked from orbit.

~~~
columbo
> I've gotten a meeting invite at 9am for a org-wide all-hands at 10am that
> day. Always a bad sign.

Oh boy, I went through a couple of those during the dot-com bust.

Best thing to do is dial into the conference number, even if you are in the
office, preferably from a bar down the street.

------
sneak
Top ten signs your CEO has been secretly replaced by a droid:

Number seven: outputs jargon-filled error messages such as "These moves, while
hard to face today, represent a proactive commitment to our mission of
connecting the world through games."

~~~
ignostic
Are you sure droids aren't modeled after CEOs?

Unfortunately, there's no great way to say "we're firing 18% of all
employees." If you're whimsical or casual, you'll be blasted for not taking
these people's lives seriously. If you're gloomy in solidarity with their
misfortune, your stock takes a hit as it looks like your company has lost
hope. Most announcements like this are written in business-ese because there's
no great "human" response that really works.

~~~
jamesaguilar
Yeah, IMO it's really easy to read between the lines with something like this.
It's not like he's trying to disguise his meaning. What is ultimately
communicated is:

\- I don't enjoy having to do this.

\- We need to do this to keep making money at the rate we want to.

Of all the things in corporate America to worry about, the wording of layoff
emails is pretty far down the list.

~~~
ryguytilidie
A billionaire who basically stole money from their employees and he calls them
"brothers and sisters" while laying them off, I do think its something that
America should finally start worrying about, yes.

~~~
jamesaguilar
I don't know about this theft you speak of, but surely that issue is
tangential to the point about exactly how he worded a layoff email. Theft is
bad on its own, no need to conflate it with unrelated matters.

------
atirip
"We are saying painful goodbyes to about 18% of our Zynga brothers and
sisters." This is where i puked. Seriosly, in whatever company, when you
suddenly do not have coworkes, but brothers and sisters - please run, resign,
leave. Now!

~~~
greenyoda
And if they were really "brothers and sisters", they wouldn't have just been
tossed out the door when the going got tough (at least most people wouldn't do
that to their actual siblings). So it's puke-worthy whichever way you look at
it.

------
obviouslygreen
Am I being too cynical, or is this...

 _...our mission of connecting the world through games..._

...just about the most ridiculous bullshit ever? Zynga is about one thing:
Profit. That's not necessarily a horribly evil thing (though the ways they go
about it might be), but it's most certainly a very clear thing. The only thing
they're interested in connecting the world to is their bank accounts.

~~~
philfreo
I'm not Zynga's biggest fan, but every company has a goal of making a profit.
That doesn't mean that company mission/vision statements are irrelevant.

~~~
jmathai
I think the point is that their mission and vision are profit, not connecting
the world by games. This would be consistent with most of Zynga's actions.

------
pshin45
There's a famous line from the 2008 Batman film "The Dark Knight" in which
Bruce Wayne's butler Alfred Pennyworth is trying to explain to Bruce and help
him understand the Joker, his new sadistic and unpredictable archenemy:

 _"Some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be
bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the
world burn."_ [1]

Maybe this makes me a bad person on par with the Joker, but I don't want Mark
Pincus to be bought out, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. I just want to
watch him burn.

(metaphorically speaking, of course)

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efHCdKb5UWc>

------
dylangs1030
At the risk of being flamed into oblivion, I support Mark Pincus' letter.

I don't think there's an easy way to write a letter like this. It's gruesome
but necessary for the press - saying nothing is bad press, saying too much
opens you up for attack. Similar to how receiving feedback explaining why you
didn't pass an interview opens up liability for the company, being _too_
candid and casual with a letter like this is a liability.

This is a shitty part of the business. I'm aware Pincus has made some
questionable decisions in the past, and a vocal majority of Hacker News users
openly despise him. I'm not going to speak to that - it's irrelevant to this
specific letter. But in this particular instance, I think we should reserve
judgement.

When Andrew Mason stepped down from Groupon, he didn't have much to lose by
making a fully transparent letter of resignation. He was widely praised - and
rightly so - but Pincus still has to work at and spearhead Zynga. He can't be
entirely self-deprecating and down to earth and "mortal" - he is still CEO,
and must be a larger than life public figure who is a businessman first, and
observer second.

That said, I don't think this letter is perfect. It's not, and that's not my
point. My point is writing a letter like this is _hard_ \- these are always
formulaic for a reason.

I do not condone his laying off 18% of his workforce, but neither do I condemn
it. I don't have the business savvy or inside information to know what would
be a best practice for Zynga in this case, but I feel sympathetic to the
workers. It sucks to get the news you'll be jobless soon.

I guess the takeaway I'm trying to deliver here is - he might have done shitty
things in the past (and I'm not absolving him of those things), but I can't
see a way this letter deserves to be torn to pieces as though most CEOs could
have done a better job. It's a hard letter to write, and I can't imagine he
was thrilled to do it. He struggled to convey a message of disappointment and
sympathy while maintaining (apparent) solidarity and corporate strength for
investors and publicity. It's a _very_ hard line to walk.

------
tptacek
_We are saying painful goodbyes to about 18% of our Zynga brothers and
sisters._

Not to express an opinion about what Zynga is actually doing, but just from
the perspective of usage: if you can be saying a "painful goodbye" to someone,
where that "goodbye" takes the form of severance, they are not your brother or
your sister. Unless you're fratricidal!

------
zerr
One question, Zynga - Why are you constantly hiring? Even now, even for the
positions you're laying off...

~~~
ryguytilidie
Recruiter here. They still contact me all the time to ask me to work there.
Good god I can't even imagine.

------
programminggeek
When the company has to cut 18% of the workforce, the CEO and management has
failed the company, basically.

I'm not sure why they are blaming mobile now, when anyone in the tech space
could see in 2007 with the iPhone that mobile was going to be a big deal.

Also, mobile has ALWAYS been huge to gaming since the game boy or one could
argue, the invention of a deck of cards.

~~~
pseut
Since dice.

------
msprague
"Our FarmVille franchise teams continue to innovate and deliver ground
breaking new social experiences like County Fair"

I'm not sure he knows what innovation means

~~~
amirmansour
Exactly what I was thinking.

------
chollida1
Well the stock went from $3.40 pre halt to a low of $2.87 just after the
reopen and seems to have settled around $3.10.

That's not a great day but it could have been much worse. We'll see what
happens going into the close but there seems to be a buy side imbalance
currently.

~~~
greenyoda
Perversely, Wall Street sometimes reacts positively to layoffs since it's an
indication that management has stopped deluding itself about the future
prospects of the company and is making an attempt to pare down its losses.

In real life, the company is going to try to get the same stuff done with 18%
fewer employees by pressuring the surviving employees to work even longer
hours, and the employees are going to start looking for jobs elsewhere.

~~~
tg3
I think the Wall Street hope is that this means scaling back efforts on
unsuccessful enterprises, and "doubling down" on successful areas.

I don't think Zynga needed to be as big as it was anyway, so maybe this could
be viewed as getting the business back to the correct size.

------
jwwest
...and those of you who were laid off will no doubt be reading this email on
our website as security has shut down your network access and escorted you
from the building.

------
andrewfelix
_"18% of our Zynga brothers and sisters."_

Who refers to family in statistics? This guy is the anti-christ.

------
jacquesm
Why doesn't he do the right thing and simply resign his position?

He won't be getting much out of his remaining 'brothers and sisters' after
stabbing a few hundred of them in the back, a new person would at least have a
somewhat clean slate to work from and maybe some hope of turning things
around.

When this guy calls you his brother or sister it's time to invest in body
armor.

------
hownottowrite
Hey, maybe Zynga's next mobile game can be B-Scan 360 with Friends? I think
there are 500 or so people who would willing sign up to beta test right
away...

[http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/magazine/12PSYCHO.html?_r=...](http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/magazine/12PSYCHO.html?_r=0)

------
ziko
Somebody needs to take responsibility for this. Letting 520 people go is not
normal, especially not in the tech industry. It's a disgrace.

------
ryguytilidie
For what its worth, this actually seems like pretty good news if you're a
Zynga stockholder.

------
yoster
That guy is a scumbag.

