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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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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.
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
Is that… the guy from EA?
This explains lot!
death to Unity long live Godot
Are we all just Waiting for Godot?
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.
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.
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.
Why do we call it “retiring” when we all know he’ll be CEO of some other company in 2 months?
I can’t imagine who would hire him. He fucked Unity badly.
Just a reminder that Unity hired him after EA.
Good riddance, but idk if this is a case of too little too late
