stevetursi

Our primary product technology tenant is that we're strategy led. That is - we're a flat org in which ICs are asked to take the strategies set my management and figure out how to implement them (Semantically, "Shape the Path.") To put it succinctly, where other organizations promise autonomy, we grant authority.

We have a high behavioral bar with new hires, asking that applicants' work history has evidence that they question the status quo, make business decisions without consulting their manager, escalate issues even when unpopular, break up empires, and raise the bar in the organization, all while earning the trust and respect of their team.

The thing that distinguishes our team (and the reason I chose to work here) is that our CIO is a functional programming evangelist who understands that you can't just hire a team of FP enthusiasts - rather, you hire great engineers interested in being challenged and train them to become FP enthusiasts. We have a formal training program ("Scala U") that will show you basic scala syntax but its real purpose is to train people in how to become functional programmers with a combination of mentorship, pairing, classroom, exercises, and books. He's easy to talk to and super-enthusiastic, and I personally have learned a lot from him.

To us, there is a quote in a different bloomberg article from last week [1] which strikes us as accurate. Attributed to Maryanne Keller, who is referred to in this article, it says:

> 'It’s a saga about gross mismanagement,” said Maryann Keller, a longtime auto-

> industry consultant who was on the board of Dollar Thrifty when Hertz acquired

> the company. “It could have been salvaged had he picked the right management,”

> she said, referring to Icahn.'

Icahn lost $1.6b. Thousands of us lost our jobs. But these C-suiters sailed the company to bankruptcy over five years, each of them extracting 7 or 8 figure bonuses. The CIO who laid us all off, for example, received $6.5 million compensation that year [2]. (Sidenote, the work we were doing was replaced with Accenture consultants, who couldn't handle it, screwing up so bad they ended up in court [3].)

One former colleague of mine wrote a post on LinkedIn suggesting Icahn was the unwitting victim of untenable debt situation, and while he may be correct that the debt made it difficult, Icahn can read a balance sheet and he understood the situation.

I can't speak about Marinello's performance, but I agree that the problem dates back to 2014 or even earlier. People have a widespread belief that Frissora was flying too close to the sun, driven by his aggressive personality. Despite his flaws, he had a great team of people who kept the business running, and it wasn't Frissora who fired them all. Nobody, it turns out, was a fan of him. But everyone agrees he was far better than the gang of unusually wealthy miscreants that Icahn replaced him with.

The thing that distinguishes our team (and the reason I chose to work here) is that our CIO is a functional programming evangelist who understands that you can't just hire a team of FP enthusiasts - rather, you hire great engineers interested in being challenged and train them to become FP enthusiasts. We have a formal training program ("Scala U") that will show you basic scala syntax but its real purpose is to train people in how to become functional programmers with a combination of mentorship, pairing, classroom, exercises, and books. He's easy to talk to and super-enthusiastic, and I personally have learned a lot from him.