<story><title>Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/08/twilio-ceo-lawson-steps-down-after-bruising-activist-battles.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gkoberger</author><text>This is a genuine question... isn&amp;#x27;t that his job?&lt;p&gt;For a public company, the CEO has to be a public CEO. Everyone takes on a different persona (some sell themselves as business geniuses, others as creative geniuses, and others as someone you wanna grab a beer with). Some really like it, and some do it begrudgingly. But at the end of the day, you can&amp;#x27;t be the same CEO of a public company as you were when you were private.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve never known Jeff to hobnob with celebrities, travel in luxury or abandon his company. I&amp;#x27;m not sure he&amp;#x27;s a &amp;quot;celebrity CEO&amp;quot; as much as he just became a public one, although I don&amp;#x27;t know him personally.&lt;p&gt;(FWIW, this is the reason I&amp;#x27;d never want to go public. I personally don&amp;#x27;t like the system, but that doesn&amp;#x27;t mean it&amp;#x27;s not how the system works.)</text></item><item><author>throwaway_108</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s also why George Hu left Twilio.&lt;p&gt;Because Jeff wanted to be a celebrity CEO, and it was to the detriment of the company.&lt;p&gt;All of Twilio&amp;#x27;s growth (as a public company) happened on George&amp;#x27;s watch.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s a coincidence that well after George left, on Jeff&amp;#x27;s watch - they had to do 3 different layoff for a total of ~24% of their entire public company being let go.&lt;p&gt;Note: former senior level Twilio employee, posted anonymous for obvious reasons.</text></item><item><author>shakes</author><text>I worked at Twilio for nearly 10 years and it&amp;#x27;s hard to overstate what a gift it was to work there and see Jeff operate as CEO up-close.&lt;p&gt;He created an environment where (at our best) we could have fun doing work that had a real impact, and we could it with people we enjoyed doing the work with. He pushed us to be creative to authentically empower and inspire developers. Wanna build a video game that teaches developers how to code and use Twilio? Let&amp;#x27;s try it! Wanna build an AI application with Tony Hawk and have Tony Hawk debug the code live on stage? Sure!&lt;p&gt;And Jeff would always be spending time with developer tools and Twilio&amp;#x27;s products himself, to the point that he could live code at the drop of a hat to show off what we&amp;#x27;d been working on. This meant his own understanding of developers and their problems never ceased to amaze me.&lt;p&gt;But more than all of that, he was a rare CEO that led with empathy, humility and care.&lt;p&gt;Thank you, jeffiel. We can&amp;#x27;t wait to see what you build next.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dragontamer</author><text>Only if you pretend that the CEOs job is purely for raising money.&lt;p&gt;Nominally, CEOs are supposed to run the company and help brew the culture that makes that company productive.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;ve grown a bunch of celebrity CEOs because people stopped caring about how companies worked over the last 10 years of low interest rates. But now that it&amp;#x27;s harder to raise money, it&amp;#x27;s time to see these guys run the companies they built.</text></comment>
<story><title>Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/08/twilio-ceo-lawson-steps-down-after-bruising-activist-battles.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gkoberger</author><text>This is a genuine question... isn&amp;#x27;t that his job?&lt;p&gt;For a public company, the CEO has to be a public CEO. Everyone takes on a different persona (some sell themselves as business geniuses, others as creative geniuses, and others as someone you wanna grab a beer with). Some really like it, and some do it begrudgingly. But at the end of the day, you can&amp;#x27;t be the same CEO of a public company as you were when you were private.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve never known Jeff to hobnob with celebrities, travel in luxury or abandon his company. I&amp;#x27;m not sure he&amp;#x27;s a &amp;quot;celebrity CEO&amp;quot; as much as he just became a public one, although I don&amp;#x27;t know him personally.&lt;p&gt;(FWIW, this is the reason I&amp;#x27;d never want to go public. I personally don&amp;#x27;t like the system, but that doesn&amp;#x27;t mean it&amp;#x27;s not how the system works.)</text></item><item><author>throwaway_108</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s also why George Hu left Twilio.&lt;p&gt;Because Jeff wanted to be a celebrity CEO, and it was to the detriment of the company.&lt;p&gt;All of Twilio&amp;#x27;s growth (as a public company) happened on George&amp;#x27;s watch.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s a coincidence that well after George left, on Jeff&amp;#x27;s watch - they had to do 3 different layoff for a total of ~24% of their entire public company being let go.&lt;p&gt;Note: former senior level Twilio employee, posted anonymous for obvious reasons.</text></item><item><author>shakes</author><text>I worked at Twilio for nearly 10 years and it&amp;#x27;s hard to overstate what a gift it was to work there and see Jeff operate as CEO up-close.&lt;p&gt;He created an environment where (at our best) we could have fun doing work that had a real impact, and we could it with people we enjoyed doing the work with. He pushed us to be creative to authentically empower and inspire developers. Wanna build a video game that teaches developers how to code and use Twilio? Let&amp;#x27;s try it! Wanna build an AI application with Tony Hawk and have Tony Hawk debug the code live on stage? Sure!&lt;p&gt;And Jeff would always be spending time with developer tools and Twilio&amp;#x27;s products himself, to the point that he could live code at the drop of a hat to show off what we&amp;#x27;d been working on. This meant his own understanding of developers and their problems never ceased to amaze me.&lt;p&gt;But more than all of that, he was a rare CEO that led with empathy, humility and care.&lt;p&gt;Thank you, jeffiel. We can&amp;#x27;t wait to see what you build next.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pmontra</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t know the right answer here, but there are thousands of public companies. If every CEO has to be a celebrity, meaning that everybody knows them and which company they are the CEO of, it&amp;#x27;s going to end up like for actors: tier one world superstars, tier two stars, then people you don&amp;#x27;t hear much about, then people you read their names sometimes in the closing credits, otherwise they are only random faces on screen.&lt;p&gt;If that&amp;#x27;s the case, the top layers of the system have space for so many CEOs. Some won&amp;#x27;t even care to be there, they&amp;#x27;ll just do their job and take the salary plus bonuses.</text></comment>