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Comment by _pplp | Hacker News Reader

Greed. 100% greed. While I was there, the CEO loved to just fly between offices (randomly) on his private jet. You never knew where he'd pop up, and that put everybody on edge, because when he was unhappy he tended to fire people in large chunks (and shut down entire offices). Every decision was motivated by how it affected the stock price.

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I'm just an outsider looking in based on a short paragraph, but that doesn't strike me as greed. How does firing entire batches of people help the stock price? Anyone with more business acumen than a cat will understand that it doesn't. "Oh, that office made a mistake? Let's fire the lot of them so they'll learn how to do better next time!"

Based on this, it seems more like an asshole with some attitude problems rather than greed per se.

At least a handful of Glassdoor reviews verify this sort of micromanagement. How awful and what an asshole.

That's a company that needs to be re-worked from the top. All C-level management fired, no golden parachute.

edit: Robert Pera owns 75% of the company, looks like C-level mgmt will never get fired. If you are at this company, just leave.

Even if greed is the only factor. Being unwilling to take a short term loss or hit while you rebuild or reinvest is just short sighted.

Most successes come with some amount of risk or foresight to anticipate the market.

I'd say stupidity first, greed second. There are a lot of private companies making a lot of money. Valve and Ikea come to mind.

Being private and successful is hard to achieve in the Capitalistic world we live in, when you achieve it stick to it.

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