If you want to avoid bad publicity from 'fired' being in the headline, you also avoid the good publicity.
Uber last week said it fired its chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, over his role in the 2016 data breach, which compromised data belonging to 57 million customers and about 600,000 drivers. The resignations Friday came amid mounting frustration within Uber’s security team over Sullivan’s dismissal and the company’s handling of the public disclosure of the breach.
So he fired the CSO, and then those reporting to Sullivan resigned (The departures include most of Sullivan’s direct reports.).
Which is not the same thing as actually firing 4 people.
Did you read the parents comment?
Dara did change the cultre at his previous company, starting by drafting a written document there too. Of course, enforcement is key and a longer process than publishing anything but firing a large number of managers will effectively change the culture. I can see how it sounds ridiculous for someone working at 99% of the companies where “company culture” is a cumbersome joke, but not in that context.
Identifying and owning up to the 8 years of toxic behavior is hard. That’s what would stop the negative news cycle. It is definitely hard, but he gets paid enough for us to have high expectations.
Who knows what he needs to work on in his first 3 months? Perhaps it is important to listen and understand everything before making decisions, rather than jumping to react so it looks good from a PR perspective.
Writing any culture statement is not hard, but running a process to understand the organization, set a clear direction for the future, and then solidifying values so that everyone in the organization knows is not. Writing a culture statement is also not the only thing he's done, just something that is public.
On a side note, the second you say "lavishly paid CEOs" and "he gets paid enough", you bring a level of disdain into the conversation that makes it hard to continue. We should absolutely hold CEOs of large companies to a high standard, not because of their pay, but because of their position and the responsibility they hold.
He just issued a new company culture statement (with massive employee participation) that eliminates the prior version's language that encouraged jerks, and includes the statement "We do the right thing".
He's been there 3 months. What else do you expect him to do? It takes time to acclimate to a new company. A CEO really needs to learn the staff, meet as many employees and customers as possible, and soak all this in before they start making big decisions. Being a CEO is never a "shoot first, aim later" type of job.