Shawn Layden quit Sony

Yep. I think he could have left because he was in disagreement with some of the moves they have just done (or something we don't know yet), like:
- Jim, if you put God of War on PS Now, I quit.
- Jim, do not cancel PS6 and replace it with only PS Now services or...
- No Jim, I won't accept Microsoft Gamepass on our consoles. I warn you.

 

nani?

 

What's the joke? Explain it like I'm a westerner.

 

Well if we start seeing a bunch of detailed leaks that turns out to be true, I know who will be my bet on who is the leaker.

LOL

 

It is exceedingly rare for a CEO to change in a market leading company. I can't think of any, can you? The CEO may leave which the company has no control over but for a CEO be asked to leave (you said they were "cleaning house"), that's unusual. Mass "cleaning house" of large multi-nationals doesn't happen any more. Again, happy for some citations if I'm wrong.

 

I think there is also must be some joke with Greg Miller.

 

Plus it would be stupid to mass clean the top leadership when a company or unit is hugely successful.

Mass cleaning is for failing companies.

 

So what does that say about governments doing so?

 

Failing is a matter of perspective for governments and companies.

 

Governments aren't run like any sane anything. They're largely moronic institutions rooted in legacy thinking and built around popularity contests and Old Boys clubs without competence in the job ever being a factor in someone getting a position of leadership.

 

The greater majority of non-tech multinationals are run like this and even tech isn't immune. HP became a shadow of its former self under successive incompetent management. Nokia, BlackBerry and Microsoft, pioneers in smartphone technology, all made themselves irrelevant in the smartphone space by laughing off the iPhone what it represented because of "legacy thinking".

There is plenty of stupid thinking to go around!

 

Yup. The only notable person to leave Sony over PS3 was Ken Kutaragi, it wasn't a house clean. People lower down the food chain like Kaz Hirai and Andrew House moved on up. Microsoft "lost" (no real loss, ha!) a few more execs but again it let people like Phil Spencer move up to turn that ship around.

I'd argue that folks who often make the best leaders are those know the guts of the organisation because they've worked in various divisions lower down. That describes Kaz Hirai, Andrew House and Phil Spencer. You can be a more effective leader when you full understand the implications of your decisions on the lower levels of your organisation.

 

Agreed. I've worked in a couple of places where some hotshot fuckwit has been brought in from an entirely different industry, and within months changed everything beneath them. Inevitably, it didn't work, the hotshots fucked off, and everything reverted to a functional state.

 

Which is where governments differ from organisations and businesses, because they bring in a fuckwit with no idea about the department they're running, screw it up, and then are replaced a few years later by another fuckwit who changes everything, still with no idea what they're doing, and no-one who ever has half a grasp of the basics for their 'department' is ever in charge of it. Even if someone good did accidentally end up in charge of health or transport or foreign policy or whatever, they'll get rotated out after a few years to ensure some fuckwit is at the reigns.

 

You obviously have never worked for a multi-national corporation.

I have been through buyouts and revolving doors of people in executive positions and org chart changes for almost a decade straight. Large corporations and the executive side of the government are the same thing.

 

Yup. My Aunt worked for the Federal Government in the US. If someone was found to be incompetent at her workplace, they were generally promoted to another division elsewhere in the country. It was easier to do that to get them out of the location than it was to try to get them fired.

So the least capable people are often times the ones that get the promotions and then the working people basically try to work around their idiocy. Note - this doesn't mean that only incompetent people get promoted, just that it's seen as a good way to get an incompetent person out of your division in the Federal Government.

Erm, yay?

Yes, you can thank the Harvard Business school for that. They spearheaded the push (back in the 80's) to do away with traditional business practice teachings (what's good for your customers is good for your business so always think of the impact on your customers) to focusing on corporate profitability at all costs. Profitability not necessarily being the companies bottom line, but how well it was doing in the stock market. They did this because their alumni were making a lot of money in the stock market and then contributing to the school of business there. That created a rather bad feedback loop and then other business schools around the country and around the world followed their example.

Thankfully, things are changing. The people that were at the forefront of that business philosophy (including tenured professors) have been let go (forced to retire) and they're trying to revert back to how business was originally taught at the college level.

Unfortunately there are a LOT of businessmen still in the workforce that were taught those business practices.

Dell is a great example of how this kind of thinking can absolutely ruin a company. But thankfully for the company Michael Dell, realizing the mistake of being a publicly traded company, managed to get enough investors to back him and take it private again.

If the stock price of your corporation becomes more important than your customers, that's a good sign that the corporation is going in the wrong direction.

Regards,
SB