Twitter, ~$35B Market Cap, no profits, operating expenses keeps growing with Gross Profits. Future projection of profitability is still slim. Along with trillions of social / political issues that you have to due with because you are running social media.

Square, ~$100B Market Cap, profitable, still mainly US based and growing. Crypto and Payment. Lots of potentials.

It is not too hard to pick which one to run.

Yeah from people that work there: it's hard to keep ad companies happy. Ad services want more personal info, tracking systems, they want geo, they want the user signed in, etc. Ad companies can get ALL that on facebook. This is completely against what twitter users (the vocal ones anyway) want.

If your goal is personal monetary profit, maybe. Is it the case of Jack? Why want more when you already have too much

Because at a certain point money becomes an addiction.

Not sure what your point is. Even gambling addicts like to donate or give away money to the hostesses and waitresses at the bar.

The addiction is earning money. Accumulating wealth. Donating it, if anything, adds to that addiction, since it lets you play god for a bit.

  Not saying Jack is all of those things, and donating money is objectively a good thing, but the greedy race for money can't be solved by promoting charity.

It’s not about money - it’s power, and shaping the future.

It’s not a matter of getting some amount of money…it’s choosing when you step back from the game and cede the future to your rivals.

Its not about "personal" profits or money, although money is certainly an indicator. It is about impact. I question Twitter's growth and future impact, good or bad.

Not only that, but it's a much simpler proposition: "Our mission is to sell payment processing". With Twitter it sounds like there was a constant battle between employees, some championing free speech, others wanting twitter to curb abuse, others angry Trump got banned, a different group angry similar Trump adjacent folks are still on Twitter...

What a headache. I'm not trying to dismiss these issues, but I can certainly see why it's a lot easier to spend your time worrying about how to make everyone happy at the company when it's Square than Twitter.

Running social media company is a job, where in the best case, half of the world hates you. No matter how good you’re, you’re always walking thin line between hate, free speech, conspiracy theories, political polarization, media and countless other issues. It’s a game you cannot win, and I’m pretty sure that’s why he’s resigning.

Maybe he just wants to do something else.

Uncharitable explanation: he's being forced out over his pro-free-speech views. He's been pretty vocal about disagreeing with Twitter's recent actions.

That makes no sense. He is the CEO and on the board, he _is_ the decision maker and could reverse any action he disagreed with. Any disagreement was purely theatre.

A CEO isn't a dictator. They still need board support. If everyone on the board decided that Jack wasn't the guy anymore, Jack can't wave a magic wand and make them disappear. CEOs have been ousted many times.

> A CEO isn't a dictator. They still need board support.

Dictators can't operate without support either.

People forget that Jack was ousted in 2008!

The board can't unilaterally decide the color of the Twitter logo is now green. They can pressure the CEO and threaten to hold a vote to fire him if he doesn't change it, but up until that point the CEO is the ultimate decision maker for the company.

Jack saying he didn't like decisions Twitter made is like if I started complaining that I didn't like the restaurant I chose for dinner.

> Jack saying he didn't like decisions Twitter made is like if I started complaining that I didn't like the restaurant I chose for dinner.

Do you have kids?

From what I hear that's not the case the with Zuckerberg, in that most decisions go through him. I would guess the same with Elon

Zuckerberg owns too much from the company. Elon is the public figure of his companies and firing him crashes the stock.

That's because Zuckerberg stacked the decks that way because he pressed his advantage early. He owns controlling interest of his operation and it can't be wrested from him.

I don't think it's the best approach to manage a company but it's sure been lucrative for Mark.

>it's sure been lucrative for Mark

I don't hear many FB shareholders complaining either, I wouldn't claim equal voting rights on my few shares even if I could (please don't crucify me HN, I'm just a tiny fish that dislikes the company but likes the stock). On paper, supershare structures are not a great thing for the common shareholder as it makes their shares basically free of voting rights when the CEO (or united group) holds such a supermajority. In practice, a strong operator like Mark gets more leeway to steer the ship with fewer barriers and inside power struggles. Imagine if the board stopped him from buying IG or WA, these purchases were very controversial at the time and many thought he was a lunatic for paying such a steep price, it only looks genius in hindsight. When/while it works, it is an effective governance structure.

Notable that these types of structures are no longer allowed, companies like Facebook, Google and Berkshire (no super-majority here) got grandfathered in.

> Notable that these types of structures are no longer allowed, companies like Facebook, Google and Berkshire (no super-majority here) got grandfathered in.

Could you maybe elaborate on that? I have never heard about this before, what exactly isn't possible these days?

Am I misremembering? I vividly recall finding information with regards to this type of structure not being allowed (unsure if regulatory or stock exchange level) with these examples (Mark's majority, Page+Brin's majority, BRK A shares) last time I came across this, but now I come up empty-handed. So I'm unsure and don't have much time to dig in, maybe someone more knowledgeable comes by. Feels bad that I can't edit in a disclaimer to my previous comment, I don't want to parrot misinformation.

Look for a video of his speech during the Bitcoin conference that happened in Miami this year. Some activist invaded the area blaming him for censorship and then he proceed to apologetically explain that the pressure comes from the companies advertising on Twitter.

EDIT: here it is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFd5zlw13FU

If you think that the CEO of a company can just do whatever they like then you haven't run a company.

If you attempt to do things that the employees do not want to do then your company will turn to shit. People will leave, and those that remain will have terrible productivity.

Yes, you get some "Just do as I say" points, but you have to choose where to spend them very wisely.

Perhaps he did reverse or prevent some actions the board in general felt he shouldn't, and this is the "please leave".

Everyone (except maybe Zuck) has a boss.

Welcome to public relations.

This is par for the course, ask a politician a question get a non-answer, ask an NFL coach about the next game “They are a good team, we have to practice hard.” It’s all just talking without really saying anything.

yes, that's the downside of the 'iterated game' dynamic: the desire to minimize leaks of future strategy. the upside, of course, is fewer defections/betrayals. it's one of the reasons we need independent journalism in society not beholden to moneyed/political interests. unfortunately, just about every news outlet, including npr, has been subverted at this point.

here's hoping jack actually believes in sacrificing money and power to defect out of this information oligopoly, though i'm skeptical as those forces are irresistable to most humans.

This is a great skill to learn BTW... along with answering only the questions you want and saying only what you want when asked questions. Rumsfeld was a master of it. It's more than public relations but also negotiation and diplomacy even in the non-political sense. I mean try to get a school board to do something or your local govt.

Replying to my own comment, but if I had to guess (on absolutely zero context and evidence :p), I would say he wants to focus on crypto/Square, and Twitter is more of a time sink. Twitter is in a good enough state at the moment that the team can move without him so it's a good moment to leave.

The 10% appreciation of the shares as a result of him leaving is reason enough. He's still a big shareholder.

Except now the stock is DOWN 2.7%.

Other than Musk for Tesla and SpaceX, I can't think of any of the major companies who would really be impacted much by their CEO leaving. Maybe Zuck leaving FB might make a small difference but IG seems decently independent of him anyway.

Zuckerberg by all accounts bullied Kevin Systrom out of the company and now it prompts you to sign in when trying to browse photos; doesn't seem independant

Jack Dorsey did something similar too to Noah Glass which doesn't get talked about much:

https://youtu.be/p8N0xN0ihMA

He is/was CEO of two companies, but seems more interested in what's going on at one more than the other. Makes sense. Get out of the way of the people focused on the mission.

When a CEO leaving the same day the news come out, it means it wasn't his decision.

I was digging around this morning and found this from 2020. You think he was just feeling the heat lately and wanted out? Or has this been in the works from opposing forces for a while now?

A billionaire Republican megadonor has purchased a "sizable" stake in Twitter and "plans to push" to oust CEO Jack Dorsey among other changes, according to new reports, raising the prospect of a shocking election-year shakeup of the social media platform that conservatives have long accused of overt left-wing political bias.

Paul Singer’s Elliott Management Corp. has already nominated four directors to Twitter's board, a development first reported by Bloomberg News, citing several sources familiar with the arrangement. The outlet noted that unlike other prominent tech CEOs, Dorsey didn't have voting control over Twitter because the company had just one class of stock; and he has long been a target for removal given Twitter's struggling user growth numbers and stock performance.

Aside from these two paragraphs the rest of the article is a lot of speculation and some quotes from people who've been against Twitter for some time:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/twitter-paul-singer-republi...

Not really. When you don't want the discussion to linger for the whole transition period, announcing the news the last minute can make sense. Not saying it's the case here though, just saying it's a possibility.

They've fired him before and last year he nearly got fired by the board when an activist investor came on board. I think if that was the case it would be public knowledge.

All while telling us how amazingly transparent the company is.

Honestly, does he really owe the public a reason? I am no Jack Dorsey fan, but it would be unusual for any CEO of even a moderately successful company to expose any internal business with the public.

He probably realistically owed the public (or shareholders) an explanation of how he could justify being CEO of two companies more than he owes an explanation of why he left one of them.

Maybe there is a current trial or lawsuit that could damage his reputation and then the company?

Like a trial that is touching a lot of big players in tech?

something.. something.... L*** express?

Thus resigning is better for the shareholders and him.

You're seeing a lot of political consolidation around getting rid of, or revamping considerably section 230 which most social media platforms have been protected from lawsuits for a while now.

When you have both parties in agreement that FB, Twitter and Google are a threat to free speech and democracy, you best watch out.

This was my thought. The heat was getting too much for him. Law makers repeatedly asking him to come testify on this and that. The pressure to get rid of 230, and have better controls on banning people may have just worn on him enough where he just decided to toss in the towel and move onto something else and quietly disappear.