Expedia Group fired their CTO, Rathi Murthy
phocuswire.com
phocuswire.com
I remember the long period of no CEO after the previous one went to Uber and Barry Diller, I think he was chairman of the board, was kinda at the helm
eventually there was an all hands where it was announced Peter Kern would be the new CEO
his qualifications? "we used to play golf together"
the old boys club vibe was next level
which is like, ok, it always is, but they weren't even trying to tastefully hide it, they literally just made it clear on the record first thing
to be clear, I'm not saying Barry or Peter did a bad job (nor a good one) - as a cog, I usually find C level news and initiatives distractions that merit little attention
I do remember though how Barry said Expedia's work life balance was all balance no work
and how Peter would phone in all hands from his castle in Colorado where he was spending time with his family to tell everyone how important it was people wound down remote work and started coming in to the office again (AFAIK he himself was very rarely in office in any meaningful capacity)
would I call it a well-run company? no, not really, but neither are most other companies, lol. most execs seem to have no better or worse idea what they're doing running a company than the average employee would.
even the few who do reach that level from more humble beginnings seem to quickly forget what it was like down there, overestimate their competence and start to look down on the plebs
pretty infuriating to be talked down to that way
like, you're talking to professional adults with Computer Science degrees here, not some deadbeats off the street lol (not that people on the street deserve scorn either, I'm just being rhetorical)
There’s a reason why fair and respectable people in power are called out as a rarity.
100%, you simply won't be allowed or enabled to join those ranks unless you give up a lot of qualities that aren't welcome there
Honestly the best decision I made was leaving the shitty albeit huge company I worked at to join a startup that had great reviews and working on something actually meaningful. Run by people who weren’t d bags. Ended up becoming a unicorn and is today a big company.
Put something good into the world and you’ll find the rewards. No point wasting life working for losers. Just my opinion.
Does this mean they had a relationship
Having a CTO and SVP axed in the same statement means rather specific circumstances. Realistically rules out harassment, performance, even "kickbacks". These you would only expect one or the other to be terminated. Whether you agree or not, a company does not want to terminate immediately (she was just on stage as key speaker) two such key positions at the same time in the same department. It's a very large gap in the org that represents a material risk to the business. So their actions have to be so "huge" to match.
Stealing, but more likely some form of colluded insider trading.
I'd wager that the SVP was helping perform trades of expedia stock on behalf of the CTO. They got caught before the SEC and were fired.
Pure guessing, but, the employees are likely to trade the stock because of RSU's so the "hiding in plain sight" tactic.
People trying to get away with insider trading don’t use someone else at the same company, they use friends or family.
> Having two people involved doesn’t preclude kickbacks, it makes it easier. One of them submits the spending request, the other one approves it, they both share the kickback.
Possible. Maybe the CTO brought in a relationship, maybe AI?, and the SVP caught wind of a kickback and got "cut in" as a result (Lord of War?).
Still, I'm not fully convinced because kickbacks, the speed is just too fast.
> People trying to get away with insider trading don’t use someone else at the same company, they use friends or family.
I wouldn't use friends or family that's what everyone else does and it becomes super obvious to the SEC. Someone within the company is not unlikely to trade the stock.
Is my best answer?
Hard to know what to say without engaging in the very speculation they are hoping to avoid. But apparently there's more details coming.
In the absence of those though, this feels rare to me, for such a thing to either (1) happen at all or to (2) have this degree of visibility.
Are high level executives getting fired all the time for violating internal company policies that are something short of being against the law, and we're just not hearing about it? I suspect not, or at least, when they are there is not often press releases about it.
Usually, one is gently but firmly pushed out. The charade of them resigning helps them save face in a job where reputation is important. They are also less likely to speak ill of the company afterwards (especially if a severance of some sort requires silence).
Actually outright firing is more rare, since the company loses any leverage over their behavior afterwards. I've seen it happen, but only once.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/expedia-cto-senior-engineerin...
See also: Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent 2011, Harvey Silverglate
C-levels get canned all the time yet these 2 get attention. What am I missing?
Compare the choreographed tone of an article describing the resignation of the AWS CEO. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/14/amazon-web-services-ceo-adam...
It’s also the CTO of a tech company.