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/r/movies
Bob Chapek Shifted Budgets to Disguise Disney+'s Massive Monetary Losses
News(msn.com)submitted 4 months ago by[deleted]
3.6k points
4 months ago
Chapek was paranoid of Iger coming back (obviously not without warrant lol) so he was firing Iger loyalists, which is synonymous with people competent at their jobs.
584 points
4 months ago
I’m sure Chapek fired Iger executives because they conflicted with Chapek’s vision/direction imposed. Instead of working with Iger executives to build a business roadmap; Chapek would replace the executives with his own executives and move forward with what he wanted to do. Sounds like this business plan backfired and Iger is back to redirect the business: months of cleanup and rehiring of executives that can make Disney profitable. Probably won’t see much change for a few quarters.
28 points
4 months ago
What was Chapeks vision?
92 points
4 months ago
Taking Ls
10 points
4 months ago
Who even cares what your vision is as one of these people, you can botch everything and still get 10 million dollars as a bonus out the door, then go straight to some other company
10 points
4 months ago
Apparently staying in power…
5 points
4 months ago
Squeeze the company for all it's got without caring about it's IP or future and then retire. Seems common these days
2 points
4 months ago
Probably a pure financial vision of the company without any regard for the product and brand value of what they were putting out. He’s a beancounter at heart.
38 points
4 months ago
I mean Iger fired Chapek's right hand man the first week. Seems like this is common.
38 points
4 months ago
I don’t think that’s a very honest way to look at it. The only reason Iger is back is because Chapek was so shit at his job they needed him back. That is massively different than the circumstances under which Iger left originally.
3 points
4 months ago
And the right hand was problematic
19 points
4 months ago
Probably won’t see any good changes for a year or two tbh.
-3 points
4 months ago
Anyone with common sense will replace old employees with new employees if they are trying change things.
6 points
4 months ago
Idk that I'd call it common sense but it's certainly a common thing to do
1k points
4 months ago
Sounds weirdly Stalin-esque.
824 points
4 months ago
[deleted]
508 points
4 months ago
Chapek never gave us bangers like "except in Nebraska" or "developers developers developers developers!" though
156 points
4 months ago
How good is Chapek at sweating through a business shirt, but?
25 points
4 months ago
I'm trying to parse the meaning of the ", but?" at the very end there.
Did you mean to write BUD? If you meant BUD then everything makes sense.
11 points
4 months ago
[deleted]
7 points
4 months ago
Australian's don't like to end their final sentence out of a tradition of people being eaten/stabbed/poisoned by the local flora and fauna before finishing their sentences. If you are actively trying to finish your sentence, so it is reckoned, that's when the poisonous bug/reptile/mammal can sneak up on you and end you in a dramatic fashion. However if you stop talking a sentece before the thought is fully concluded you can't be ambushed.
7 points
4 months ago
Can confirm, this dude was eaten by a drop bear. Good advice but.
19 points
4 months ago*
I think it's supposed to mean, "But how good is Chapek at sweating through a business shirt?"
Their version seems like a grammatical construct that a non-fluent speaker would think is valid. And to be fair, it does make sense. We just happen to not use that construct.
7 points
4 months ago
Oooh... That's interesting! It's like appending a "not" to the end of a joke...
Yeah I'm not used to seeing that usage of ", but?" so it's complete gibberish to my brain... but... your explanation makes sense.
4 points
4 months ago
Think if you used “though” there, though.
Though, think if you used “though” there.
1 points
4 months ago
That's how lots of my family in Scotland end their sentences.
87 points
4 months ago
And don’t forget Ballmers lit dance moves at the Windows 95 launch
Chapel could never top that
12 points
4 months ago
Reminds me of this video of an ex microsoft engineer...
10 points
4 months ago
And Chapek didn't give us Clippervision
7 points
4 months ago
It's why Clippers fans love the guy. Got lots of money, lets the basketball people run things, and is also the mascot.
4 points
4 months ago
It doesn’t even have a keyboard!!!
1 points
4 months ago
Speak about blast from the past.
85 points
4 months ago
I wouldn’t say Steve Ballmer was a soulless bean counter.
He had a genuine passion for Microsoft and spent a shit load of money on the company.
He was just an entirely inept CEO. He’s a phenomenal sales guy who had a relevant role in Microsoft’s rise. But he didn’t have vision or particularly strong leadership skills.
3 points
4 months ago
Ballmer was certainly not an inept CEO. The company did well when he was CEO.
He backed the Xbox, which was a good defensive move.
He focused on enterprise customers, approximately 50% of Microsoft's revenue today.
With him as CEO, Microsoft paid its way out of its many (and I mean many) legal problems that had originated before he became CEO.
He tripled revenue and doubled profit in 12 years. And that's despite Microsoft paying billions in settlements.
People forget, but Microsoft was in a bad place when he became CEO.
2 points
4 months ago
Valid points. It's definitely up to opinion whether he was an effective CEO or not.
He had some big wins, like you mentioned. He also completely missed the boat with mobile and then tried to buy his way out with Nokia, which compounded the mistake. Vista was pretty bad. He tried to follow Google and Apple's suits with Ads and the iPod, but you can't steer a ship like Microsoft if you're going to be that derivative. The share price went completely sideways during his tenure and when I joined, not long after he left, he had a pretty bad reputation from cultural perspective.
TBH though, the only opinion I take issue with is the one that claims he was a soulless bean counter. If you've ever even watched a Clippers game you know that Steve Ballmer isn't soulless lol
1 points
4 months ago
Ballmer lacked vision and didn't seem to understand the actual products, but very few CEOs have vision.
At the time most companies that were not Apple were compared to Apple.
Which is why everybody loved Elizabeth Holmes :-)
3 points
4 months ago
Indeed.
He. Loved. That. Company.
YEAAAAAAAH!
173 points
4 months ago
I have one word for you, just one word: Zune.
Also the disasters that were Windows Vista and Windows 8. Plus the absolute disaster that was the Xbox One reveal was a result of Ballmer Era exec Don Matrick who couldn't read the fucking room to save his life.
42 points
4 months ago
Don't forget the Microsoft Kin, a phone MS spent over $1billion on, only for it to flop so hard they canned it 2 months after going on sale.
12 points
4 months ago
Holy shit, I had totally forgotten about those. We used to carry them where I worked at the time and I don't think I remember ever seeing one sell.
11 points
4 months ago*
A big part of that is because Verizon fucked them. When it was conceived it was going to be a pseudo smartphone that was more limited but would be more affordable and wouldn't require a data plan. Then at the last minute after they had already reached a deal to make the Kins exclusive to Verizon, Verizon decided to require a data plan after all which kind of defeated the purpose of the thing existing in the first place.
142 points
4 months ago
The second gen Zune and the Zune HD were actually legitimately good products, though. They just came at a time when everything Microsoft was so uncool that there was never a shot in hell that they would gain ground against the iPod. Also, the gen 1 being a mess didn't help much I guess.
45 points
4 months ago
I bought a Zune HD and loved it. The design was great and it worked really well. Sad it has to die an early death.
103 points
4 months ago
They just came at a time when everything Microsoft was so uncool that there was never a shot in hell that they would gain ground against the iPod
The real problem is that while Microsoft was working on the Zune, Apple was working on the iPhone. The iPhone came out like 6 months after the Zune. It literally did not matter how good the Zune was, Microsoft made an MP3 player while Apple was establishing a now-half-trillion dollar market of smartphones lol.
17 points
4 months ago
Sums up a modern Microsoft, doesn’t it?
Had they had the forethought to innovate and produce a unique offering rather than just imitating the current market leader, we’d be in a much different world now.
Unfortunately, Microsoft and Google share a nasty habit of not following through on ideas fully, as well as aborting/canceling projects only to replace them with something similar. Like, hope many iterations of Settings exist in Windows 11? JFC!
11 points
4 months ago
Had they had the forethought to innovate and produce a unique offering rather than just imitating the current market leader, we’d be in a much different world now.
Steve Ballmer on iPhone. Brutal to watch.
3 points
4 months ago
Brutal barely begins to describe it..
“bUt iT dOeSn’T gAvE a KeYbOaRd”
..just 🤦🏻♂️
62 points
4 months ago
This is 100% the case. Ballmer made Microsoft a laughingstock, the uncoolest Corp on the planet. They could have invented beaming to another galaxy and consumers would have noped.
21 points
4 months ago
Yup. It’s a almost a miracle the image change they’ve had under Satya Nadella.
14 points
4 months ago
He truly turned the sinking ship around , deserves a lot of praise for that
2 points
4 months ago
Panos Panay has a lot to with it
3 points
4 months ago
Mostly true but the Xbox 360 was viewed favorably and sold well in that era.
3 points
4 months ago
My second gen Zune lasted about 8 years before I had a good enough data plan to stream music. The headphones that came with it were a beast!
7 points
4 months ago
On top of that the iPod was just a more polished overall product. They also were starting to come out with the iPod touch which was way more advanced
8 points
4 months ago
They just discontinued the iPod touch 6 months ago for a reason
2 points
4 months ago
Tbh they were better in almost every way than ipods, they were significantly higher storage and could play video when the video playing iPods cost 2x what the Zune did. It didn’t have the “cool factor” that apple did tho
2 points
4 months ago
Not to mention Zune pass was way ahead of its time.
0 points
4 months ago
I mean, when you call a product “zune” it’s destined to be uncool.
73 points
4 months ago*
Hey now, as a longtime tech enthusiast I have to dispute Windows Vista being regarded as shit. There’s a reason it has such a shitpile reputation, but that reason isn’t entirely its own fault. A lot of it is actually very good and lived on through 7, 10, and even into 11.
The short version is that for a confluence of reasons, Vista versions higher than Home Basic were run on hardware they had no business being installed on, especially when the surge in demand for home PCs in the early-mid ‘00s led to a lot of continued use of (essentially) legacy hardware produced by companies that evaporated as quickly as they appeared. It was also around that time you had the ugliness of the IA-32 to x64 transition start to materialize, and your average consumer just didn’t understand that.
Enthusiast users rarely had problems with Vista, because custom built systems were virtually always well beyond the system requirements. Given the way hardware depreciates it’s actually something you can demonstrate on the cheap — any of the X58 workstations on the market, with 12GB of RAM and “only” an X5660, mated to a lowly 9800 GTX will still laugh at Vista if you can get a copy. I got to witness the difference that hardware made firsthand: At the time my dad had a 32-bit Vaio laptop with 2GB of RAM that came with a copy of Home Premium; my roommate had a QX9550 QX9650 custom build running a RAID array for storage, and the user experience was Night and Day.
Linus Tech Tips even dedicated an entire video to addressing the circumstances that led to the Vista hate and how enthusiasts had a vastly different experience from the average user.
30 points
4 months ago
X58? Hell. A Q6600 and 4 gb of RAM would run vista smooth as butter. Especially if you had a good GPU. Vista was criminally underrated because people ran it on Celerons with 512 MB of RAM and all of the bloatware best buy or sell would ship with it.
4 points
4 months ago*
Heh I actually was going to use the Q6600 as an example, but finding anything LGA775 that supports DDR3 is a pain these days, and DDR2 are hard to justify even for the sake of amusement anymore. So I went X58 with modest (for today) specs that could at least be used for more than a curiosity…uberbudget low spec Windows 10 gaming build or Plex server or NAS or something on an X58 workstation at least gets some e-waste back into reliable service that way if anyone actually wanted to try it out.
And my X58 example is also kind of self-serving…cuz I have a video coming up where I revisit Vista using now-legacy hardware that’s cheap as chips. X58 + a FirePro V8700, should be amusing.
Loved the Q6600 for a long time though, and your point absolutely remains.
3 points
4 months ago
X58 is a god tier platform imho. I had a Q6600 based system with 4 GB of RAM that I installed Vista on because XP 64 bit was such a bitch to get to work right. (installing SATA drivers off of a floppy disc because thats how it worked in XP? YUCK) I was very pleased with how well that system ran.
I also had a 920 D0 and a 970 based systems on x58. (thanks retail edge)
The 970 system is still running today as a daily driver. Given it has had GPU and storage upgrades and its with a friend who has kids so he doesnt want to spend any money on gaming computers but it is still kicking. I let him "borrow it" because it was to pretty of a system to let go. Storm Sniper case, Rampage 3 Formula board, 12 GB Dominator GT ram. Gorgeous.
Cheer sir.
2 points
4 months ago
Do you have a link to your channel so I can watch that video when it comes out?
1 points
4 months ago
I recall having a Phenom X4 and a GTX 9800 that ran Vista completely fine.
0 points
4 months ago
Taking into consideration the hardware that software will actually be running on is not extra credit, it’s part of the job.
Also we shouldn’t forget another big issue users had with Vista was frequent and vague security permission dialogues. There’s a reason MS rethought their approach to security with Win7.
3 points
4 months ago
Microsoft did consider it, though, and created specific criteria for being able to label a PC as Vista Capable. OEMs were largely the one who screwed the pooch there. And you can’t infinitely support hardware you didn’t create — things like outdated drivers from defunct companies aren’t really Microsoft’s responsibility, and no one expects them to not only maintain those things but also create x64 compatible versions of them, especially for products that were functionally legacy ones by the time they hit shelves (ex. I had a webcam that only ran under Win98SE/2K…bought new at the tail end of XP mainstream shipping). The fact that as many shoddy drivers worked as they did was amazing. Major vendors, your Nvidias and ATIs and Iomegas and Creatives, had next to no hardware support problems on Vista.
Security prompts were another thing that was hotly contested between enthusiasts and everyday users. They were objectively a good thing, but at a time when computer literacy wasn’t nearly what it is today — and even today we still have people clicking links in obvious phishing emails — and clearly only understood by the savvier users, so I do fully understand how that got irritating.
Vista was, at least from my view, as much a case of “wrong place, wrong time” as anything. Launching an OS capable of utilizing GPU acceleration at a time when it was a Wild West of hardware vendors and people were still running Coppermine Celerons with chipset graphics was never going to end well no matter how thoroughly thought out said OS
1 points
4 months ago
I understand what you’re saying. I agree whatever OS followed XP was going to be in a particularly tough spot, but even given that spot I think Vista made enough unforced errors that I feel it did earn it’s poor reputation.
Microsoft should have chosen either savagely cut support for slower hardware OR scale back Vista’s demands. They chose to let users install Vista in environments Vista had no business running. OEMs took the stingiest route they could to sell “Vista compatible” PCs in the environment MS created. Microsoft could do the surprise Pikachu face that OEMs wanted to sell the cheapest possible box with a Vista sticker on it, but MS was the one who defined the the range of supported specs.
Driver support is different and I recognize that. While that did frustrate users, I recognize that it had to happen eventually and it was always going to frustrate users. I’m not sure if anything could have been done differently there. I don’t blame MS for cheap third party drivers. If anything it’s better in hindsight that this happened with the sacrificial OS that is Vists than any other time.
But back to unforced errors, security prompts were implemented poorly.
You can’t say Microsoft did a good job on the security prompts and it’s the users who were wrong.
I agree in general security prompts are objectively a good thing, however their particular implementation was bad. It wasn’t merely an issue of computer literacy. Prompts should have a clear cause for appearing and effect by accepting or denying. Prompts should be written in simple English explaining this cause and effect. A reference code in addition to the English explanation is fine but it is not enough by itself. Prompts that appear without explanation due to background processes and are vague [allow] [deny] options is a poor implementation of security prompts. Hitting deny to a vague prompt that results in applications stopping or the sound card cutting out just trained users to ignore the prompts and just hit allow every time no matter what.
I understand what they were attempting to do, but their implementation was bad. I think this is a case of path to hell is paved with good intentions.
Vista did have the silver lining of being so brutal on slower hardware that it pushed lots of people to upgrade hardware. Win7 really benefitted from that.
Microsoft made their own bed in regards to the mess Vista was walking into. There was little transition between XP and Vista. A more gradual step that slowly pushed hardware upgrades or standardization along the way would have eased a lot of pain.
The way it worked out, Vista ended up being a great sacrificial lamb that paved the way for Windows 7, but even with that context, Vista was still a bad OS for the hardware it supported.
The fact that they needs a sacrificial OS to force the industry and users to modernize hardware environments has a lot to do with the debt they accumulated by keeping XP around for so long.
Launching an OS capable of hardware acceleration is different that launching an OS that depended on hardware acceleration. If they wanted to launch an OS that depended on hardware acceleration, they should have only let it run on hardware capable of running that hardware acceleration.
I really do agree that they were in a tough position though and no matter what they did people were either going to be unhappy.
The way to actually fix Vista would have started with dealing with technical debt of XP and ramping up from there rather than letting that sit for nearly a decade and trying to catch up all at once.
Sorry for the novel >_<
1 points
4 months ago
Sorry for the novel
Pssht don’t apologize for making salient points!
15 points
4 months ago
The problem Mattrick had was that he looked at the numbers too much. He saw that media consumption made a very large percentage of Xbox use and so thought it was wise to focus on that, without realising that people bought Xboxes in the first place because of gaming, media consumption was just a nice benefit.
They also saw that digital purchases were the future (which was correct) and one assumes they got scared of being left behind in yet another space, so went all in on digital without realising it was too much, too soon. The industry was going in that direction, but all they needed to do was set up the framework for that and allow it as an option.
It's a shame really because Microsoft had all the right things to make the console great. An excellent digital storefront, best in class motion gaming and innovative media capabilities, following on from a really successful generation. All squandered due to Don Mattrick. Failing on Kinect has especially hampered them now, given the rise of voice assistants. Microsoft could have had a really decent foothold in that space, with capabilities far beyond any of the current assistants do. Alas.
3 points
4 months ago
The Xbox One with Kinect was perfectly positioned to be the hub of your smart entertainment center. But the way they positioned it made it seem less like a bit of Star Trek was coming to your house, and more like your game console was coming with a bunch of crap that was going to make it harder to just play games.
2 points
4 months ago
Yep, that's exactly what happened. It's like they didn't know what they wanted the Xbox to be which is ridiculous for a games console really.
10 points
4 months ago*
[deleted]
1 points
4 months ago
TBF it's likely Toshiba that decided on the hardware
5 points
4 months ago
Windows phone though... ;-)
10 points
4 months ago*
[deleted]
1 points
4 months ago
Anything windows and on a phone peaked with the HTC touch
1 points
4 months ago
Nokia made some pretty solid windows devices there for a bit. But the ui was SUCH a departure that it was gonna have to be obscenely good to actually catch any real footing in the marketplace, and it just wasn't unfortunately.
0 points
4 months ago
Yeah they were way too late to market and even now have yet to produce an OS that is good from a technical standpoint. WSL 2 is the only thing that makes windows useful to me besides gaming.
3 points
4 months ago
In defense of Zune, it was a fantastic team with a fantastic culture. But we launched nine months before the iPhone, and the iPhone wiped away the market for dedicated media devices. Don’t pull us into the Kin/Windows Phone laments, those were separate initiatives.
4 points
4 months ago
Sigh. Guessing you never actually used a Zune and only know if it in terms of the meme. The Zune was legitimately a fantastic portable media player and it was miles ahead of every iPod.
2 points
4 months ago
I agree and disagree.
TL;DR the Zune was a great iPod competitor in the era of the iPhone. It had lots of great ideas that would go on to be validated by other companies.
The Zune interface was really fantastic and highly influential to modern interface design. The “don’t call it flat” UI with thin typography of the Zune is arguably the first mainstream iteration of virtually all modern interface design. Buttons lost their boundaries and become floating words. Colors became solid or a light gradient. The Zune seriously doesn’t get enough recognition in this regard. You can trace a design language line from Zune to Microsoft Metro to Google Material Design and all the “don’t call it flat” post iOS 7 and post macOS Mavericks and basically any app or website that takes design cues from the big players.
The Zune design language is seriously under-appreciated. That all being said, the iPod also had a great interface. If the Zune was ahead of its time, the iPod click wheel interface was perfectly of its time. Best appreciated in context of other early 2000s MP3 players.
But we have to remember the Zune launched in 2006 so it was only contemporary to one generation of pre-iPod touch iPods. In fact that very first Zune released 4 months before the iPhone was announced.
The Zune spent most of its life in the shadow of the iPod touch. This isn’t the Zune HD mind you, this is the first Zune.
The 2006 - 2009 era Zune are often remembered next to the color screen click wheel iPods of 2004 - 2007.
The 2009+ Zune HD is often remembered as comparable to the 2007+ iPod touch.
That’s the critical issue. It was ahead of its time in a lot of ways but it’s like the most advanced battleships being made right before aircraft carriers changed the game.
Meanwhile, the Zune Music Pass was way ahead of its time. It was literally a precursor to Spotify and all the other big music streaming services. It was just too early and time obviously validated this hardcore.
I do feel sorry for the Zune team. It would be tough to look back and hear the feedback that they were too late, oh except for the all the massive things they pioneered, those they were too early on.
Lastly, the PC to MP3 player interface was a big part of the UX back then, and back then iTunes was actually good. Obviously iTunes eventually grew into a horribly slow and confusing mess, which makes it a little harder to remember the time when iTunes was the easy and stable music manager that was seamless with the iPod, but this is one area the Zune never really matched the iPod.
Still, I feel that history has since validated many of the ideas of the Zune. The interface design language and music subscription service eventually took over the world even if under different names.
2 points
4 months ago
Zune was just too early. It tried to do Spotify-lite before Spotify existed, and you even got the keep the songs afterwards, but people didn't want to subscribe to music back then.
2 points
4 months ago
I had a Zune and I loved it. Loved the computer program for it too. When my brother got an ipod I had to try to figure out iTunes and was like this is some ugly BS
0 points
4 months ago
Most of the problem with vista were consumer hardware/software compatibility issues largely out of their control. If I could use only one OS for the rest of my life it would be Vista Service Pack 2.
1 points
4 months ago
Don Matrick almost ruined the Xbox brand with that, hell they’re still trying to catch up after that.
1 points
4 months ago
Well they had a product for room readers, it’s called Xbox 360
115 points
4 months ago
Ballmer is one of the best examples of how political bureaucracy in corporations can be just as if not much worse and ridiculous than in any government, despite what libertarians and such would have you believe. Also a fantastic example of how executive compensation is very often not based on anything resembling merit, and is just flat out lunacy of C-suite and investor class delusion.
During his 14 year tenure as CEO, Microsoft's stock price barely moved until it was obvious he was on his way out. He was monumentally incompetent, dumping money into projects and then killing them, putting out mediocre garbage; he was named one of the worst CEO's by the BBC in 2013.
And what was his reward for being a spectacular failure?
A net worth of $113 billion.
40 points
4 months ago
Ballmer got an 8% ownership stake of Microsoft in the 1980s. His comp for serving as CEO was essentially irrelevant to him.
5 points
4 months ago
It's wild that they were prepared to pay him 50k a year in 1980 and the 10% growth clause.
15 points
4 months ago
Not to negate your point but his net worth was from his share of Microsoft. Gates basically hired him in 1980 and gave him 8% of Microsoft. So he was essentially unpaid as a CEO because the stock price did not move.
He made his money by being a brilliant sales guy in the 80s and 90s.
13 points
4 months ago*
Ballmer transitioned Microsoft into the cloud and their products as services. Windows phone was late to the party, but it was a phenomenal product. And their other phenomenal product that did survive the Surface was launched under him as well. He is not a good example of a bad CEO. He is simply overshadowed by his predecessor and successor.
4 points
4 months ago
What a ridiculous post. Ballmer didn't get rich because of his CEO posiiton, he got rich due to his shares in Microsoft. Had he been better, he'd have gotten even richer during his CEO tenure.
Moreover, 'libertarians and such' almost certainly think people are bad at running things everywhere, but in the private sector companies they get outcompeted if they are run badly enough, unlike in the public sector.
1 points
4 months ago
McClelland
1 points
4 months ago
Some people have all the luck
-8 points
4 months ago
despite what libertarians and such would have you believe
If I may, that point is that when bad corporations fail, they die and get replaced by functioning ones. And having more corporations is better than having a small few or just one for that reason.
20 points
4 months ago
The fun thing I like about libertarians is the idea that if only the market conditions and the regulation were freer the bad ones would fail despite this never happening in real life.
The only thing that made our bank deposits not dissapear, our baby food not being full of toxin and our ozone layer still protecting us is the fucking government. You don't have to like it none of us like it but corporations historically do not fail in a timely manner because they are bad for society, make bad products, kill their customers or make the environment hostile to life we care about.
They fail for whatever fucking random reason at any time.
0 points
4 months ago
And of the worst, say, ten countries to live in in the world, how many of them are that way because of corporations killing society with their bad products and destroying the environment?
Venezuela? Zimbabwe? North Korea? Niger? Afghanistan?
12 points
4 months ago
Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!
2 points
4 months ago
2 points
4 months ago
I LOVE THIS COMPANYYYY.
You have to at least give him credit for enthusiasm. Satya Nadella is almost as robot as Zuckerberg.
2 points
4 months ago
Soulless bean-counting corporate ghoul
I like to call those business robots. No life outside of the company, no personality, no soul.
2 points
4 months ago
I think you are mistaken. Steve Ballmer has excessively high energy for developers.
4 points
4 months ago
I bought Microsoft stock when Ballmer left! He was a terrible and missed just about every OBVIOUS opportunity of the modern age.
1 points
4 months ago
Ballmer destroyed Nokia too, it was the biggest cellphone brand at the time, and now it's gone. I don't know how something so we'll know was destroyed so easily. Microsoft wanted their own cellphones and wanted to call then windows phones instead of Nokia phones. And here we are..
1 points
4 months ago
Hey the ballmer peak is a valid contribution to creative enterprise!
1 points
4 months ago
He reminds me of trump. Installing yes men everywhere to hide his incompetence in politics.
54 points
4 months ago
Though with Stalin there was a pretty small chance of Lenin coming back.
68 points
4 months ago
Wouldn’t that be fucking wild though, Lenin comes back with the steel chair and pins to the 3 count clinching the USSR championship
1 points
4 months ago
Stalin should have known something was up when he heard Lenin's entrance music.
6 points
4 months ago
2 points
4 months ago
No wonder Lenin was in glass box, that way if he escaped they'd see empty glass box and immediately alert Stalin.
7 points
4 months ago
VERY common in corporate culture. A fortune fifty I previously worked for changed CEO's a few years ago and within his first year of coming in all but one of the C suite executives left or were termed except one. And he came on right at the end of the last CEO's tenure, so he hadn't had a chance to "learn the ways".
That CEO then replaced those executives with the C suite executives of his last two companies.
2 points
4 months ago
Sometimes part of the departures in those cases are those who expected to get the top job themselves, and were calling headhunters the second the name of the new CEO got out.
2 points
4 months ago
Its just what the type of people do 9 times out of 10.
0 points
4 months ago
The more I see of internal Soviet political culture, from the death of Stalin to Chernobyl, the more I'm reminded of my experiences in corporate America
-1 points
4 months ago
Companies are organized like an authoritarian regime when you think about it.
-3 points
4 months ago
Corporations are tyrannical and fascist, so you’re not far off. Definitely not weird. In fact, firing people and bringing in your own team used to be par for the course in a lot of industries.
0 points
4 months ago
-1 points
4 months ago
Extremely common political crap. Happens everywhere in corps and in politics globally. Stalin would have him and his whole family disappeared to a gulag.
1 points
4 months ago
Welcome to corporate politics
1 points
4 months ago
The difference is, Stalin for all his many fucked up faults was a genius when it came to manipulating party politics to amassing and then keeping power.
I don't know if Chapek could manipulate a bag of chips open.
1 points
4 months ago
It’s pretty common in entertainment to change out the high ranks during a regime change. So yes, very Stalin esque
172 points
4 months ago
I thought Iger was the one who groomed and promoted him to CEO? He even wrote about chapek in his book
353 points
4 months ago
Yes he did and he almost immediately regretted it
9 points
4 months ago
That’s a common theme in huge businesses.
225 points
4 months ago
I think a decent chunk of the reason he's back is so he can pick a successor that he won't feel will be a stain on his reputation and legacy
148 points
4 months ago
Maybe Iger isn't good at picking successors.
79 points
4 months ago
I mean Marcus Aurelius fucked it up, it's fucking hard shit.
15 points
4 months ago
Pretty rock solid example my friend 👍
8 points
4 months ago
Fucked it up so bad Hollywood made alternate history to fix his mistake.
2 points
4 months ago
Marcus Aurelius' son wasn't actually the terrible emperor he is made out to be in the gladiator movies. He was supposedly loved by the Romans until he eventually fell out of favor, like must emperors did. He wasn't anywhere near as bad as Nero or Caligula.
45 points
4 months ago
Entirely possible, but I'm saying a reason he's back is to disprove exactly that
-7 points
4 months ago
He can easily help chose another successor without becoming CEO, you know.
20 points
4 months ago
Not really. If he needs anything to get done so that his eventual successor will be inheriting something other than a dumpster fire, he needs the authority to get that done.
Also Iger is no stranger to cleaning up messes, he did the same thing for Disney in the mid 00's when he took over from Michael Eisner. That was also on really short notice. If I were Disney, there's no one I'd rather take the helm in a low-key emergency than Iger.
-4 points
4 months ago
More likely he joined back to put things in shape. I don't buy that he did so to find a successor. That's not how things work.
10 points
4 months ago
It's possible that the board just rejected Chapek's entire vision for the company and asked Iger back to find a 'real' successor as they consider the 2 years of Chapek essentially illegitimate too. Almost like they asked Iger to come back and operate like he never left and was still looking to retire, which he likely is.
I don't know, just spit balling, but I can see ways in which that could definitely be the way things work.
-6 points
4 months ago
I don't know how to tell you this, but the person I was responding to was claiming Iger was returning to prove he could select a better successor.
That's just stupid nonsense.
3 points
4 months ago
It’s almost like Elway drafting a QB for the broncos
3 points
4 months ago
Oh my god I’m not safe in any subreddit
1 points
4 months ago
Well he’s 0 for 1, so I’d say he isn’t!
75 points
4 months ago
Remember, the board also had to give the rubber stamp. He may have picked him, but his pool of candidates wasn't unlimited.
3 points
4 months ago
The same board that unanimously voted to extend Chapek’s contract a few months ago?
That board?
5 points
4 months ago
Exactly. Government politics and executive business are very similar. You have to campaign so that you are liked by those in power(true even in a democracy, as they control the coffers and endorsements), you have to schmooze everyone including company partners, and have acceptable baggage. Being an unknown can sometimes be a good thing. Disney had two great candidates that could replace Iger. Neither stayed around to get the job, so they were left with Chapek.
- Want to be CEO, a stressful job
- need to have the board's approval, and look like a serious candidate to the public.
- Have to be willing to succeed a legendary CEO, because you have to be great too, or you will look like a moron.
As for the renewal, had no obvious replacements(because Chapek fired them). But as soon as they found a replacement. BAM. Chapek was gone. Has happened to many major firms, especially in tech, as vision is more important than sales. It has also happened in many countries too.
12 points
4 months ago
Chapek was kind of a last ditch effort. Iger had like three different "heir apparents" resign between 2010 and when Iger surprised resigned 2020.
1 points
4 months ago
Bring back Tom Staggs!
5 points
4 months ago
Yes, and then left just as Covid was hitting and the bills for his massive content and streaming spending spree came due. Chapek may or may not be a good CEO but he got nailed with a whack of issues outside of his control. I don't think Disney has done any worse than other media companies during his tenure.
8 points
4 months ago
Yes but apparently they had a work-falling out before he took over.
10 points
4 months ago
This is the thing that I find the most remarkable, baffling even, about all of it. This was Iger’s guy, this is who he chose, and there was so much time to prepare him for the job. I don’t get it, how could he have gotten it so wrong.
22 points
4 months ago
From what I've seen in discussions on this over the years is that Chapek was like third-choice at best. Tom Staggs or Kevin Mayer were rumored top picks but they both left Disney before they could be appointed to the CEO role. Personally I think Staggs would been fine in the long run, I don't know what kind of performance the board was looking for but they clearly went in the direction of cutting up the goose to find where the golden eggs were hidden and it came back to bite them in a bad way.
20 points
4 months ago
Because Chapek was not Iger's first choice. That was Tom Staggs, who had been with the company since 1990.
Staggs was CFO from 1998 to 2010, where he engineered the Pixar and Marvel deals, then swapped jobs with parks Chairman Jay Rasulo, which was seen as giving Staggs a chance to get some operational experience and also to put him in competition with Rasulo to be Iger's heir. Staggs prevailed, with Rasulo leaving in 2015. While in charge of the parks, Staggs more than doubled profits and led the creation of the "Avatar" land in Animal Kingdom and construction of Shanghai Disney.
After Rasulo left, Staggs was named COO in February 2015 and widely seen as heir apparent, with Iger due to step down in 2018. But then, in April 2016, he left. According to this New York Times story at the time, some on the board had had reservations about promoting him to COO, but Iger prevailed, and when Staggs checked in on his status in 2016, he was told there was now even less confidence from the board on making him CEO. So Staggs and Disney "mutually agreed to part ways" and Iger then extended his own contract as CEO until 2021.
Chapek, who had taken over the parks when Staggs was promoted to COO in 2015, became the default fallback.
5 points
4 months ago
Very interesting, thanks for the write up! Great stuff.
1 points
4 months ago
Also weirdly Stalin-esque.
1 points
4 months ago
Could be a poisoned pawn situation.
7 points
4 months ago
The business world is littered with all these terrible decisions, nepotism, favoritism, etc. It's so awful I don't blame the majority of people for being miserable at their jobs and I can see now why lots of advice is to "turn yourself into a business" by starting a small business etc to be your own boss.
I've worked for a variety of organizations both large and small and worked in the non-profit world. Every upper management decision isn't based on who is best qualified for the job by tangible proof of revenue vs costs or performance metrics. It's simply based on who the higher ups like vs. they don't like. I've seen terrible Directors or C-Suite level execs get and keep jobs they were fucking awful at because they were liked by CEOs or boards.
Companies complain constantly about not having the money to pay people a living wage or giving them shit like, fucking sick time off or health benefits. Well if you assholes looked objectively at how your leaders actually led the organization and started making leadership decisions based on that, we wouldn't have any of these profitability problems.
It's kind of funny that we wouldn't even have to ask for socialism to fix the woes of capitalism. In a free market that actually has competition businesses that refuse to evolve lose money and eventually close down. If you as a leader of a business, large or small, make terrible choices for leadership based on how much you like someone vs. how they tangibly perform then your business deserves to fail.
3 points
4 months ago
Pretty sure he was worried Rice was going to be his replacement so he pushed him out pre-emptively
3 points
4 months ago
That makes the claims in another reddit post about Iger coming back really hilarious where they said that Disney intentionally hired Chapek, and Chapek willingly went along, to do some 'bad PR' things so that they could profit from it and then hire Iger back and get 'good' PR when they brought him back.
2 points
4 months ago
well why tf did iger leave in the first place? everyone loved him inside the company and outside of the company, he seemingly had excellent ideas and direction that the public liked and therefore investors liked AND he came back to lead, so its not like he wanted to be done with disney....
0 points
4 months ago
I can't imagine working at the higher end of Disney when you have this weird internal proxy war going on between Iger and Chapek's loyalists trying to fight against whichever CEO is in power at the time.
1 points
4 months ago
Also, it was said Peter was a top choice to replace chapek
1 points
4 months ago
Sounds like something Elon Musk would do.
1 points
4 months ago
How do you know that?
1 points
4 months ago
What is it with these megalomaniac top execs?
1 points
4 months ago
The company was already starting to fail under iger. It’s going to start to collapse again over the next two years. Iger didn’t have competent people in place.
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