We changed the URL from <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2019/12/away_replaces_ceo" rel="nofollow">https://daringfireball.net/2019/12/away_replaces_ceo</a> to the article it points to, in keeping with the site guideline that asks for original sources. It might be best to look at both articles, though, since they cover different aspects.<p>Edit: someone pointed out that the OP adds an additional perspective that isn't just copying what was said in the WSJ article, so we'll switch back to that from <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/online-luggage-startup-away-says-ceo-is-stepping-down-11575930577" rel="nofollow">https://www.wsj.com/articles/online-luggage-startup-away-say...</a>. Thanks!
There is speculation in this article and elsewhere that the timing of this forced change of leadership so soon after an anonymously sourced article revealing Korey’s abrasive management is evidence of a larger PR proxy war between governance and the CEO. I’d be curious to learn about whether this is a common conspiracy and if anyone has other such examples.
Some of the Verge article is indeed hyperbolic. The writer may have needed to hit a word count. It seems silly to sound outraged about:
* leadership being a clique
* requesting that PR firestorms not be spread further
* leadership going apesh&t over bad products being received as the 2018 holiday season is arriving and teams not addressing quickly
But, IMHO some of the behavior definitely was worth termination over. Framing the CX access as accountability exercise they way she did, for example, was pretty bad, and some of the other sarcasms I read were also just toxic. That kind of toxic is so very counterproductive in any timeframe. You can communicate what you need, with utmost clarity and punch, in other ways.
"When a co-worker invited Avery to join a private Slack channel called #Hot-Topics filled with LGBTQ folks and people of color, she was relieved to find that she wasn’t the only one who felt uncomfortable with Away’s purported mission and company culture.<p>So when the executive’s name unexpectedly popped into #Hot-Topics the morning of May 16th, 2018, employees knew something was wrong. She’d found out about the channel from Erin Grau, the head of people... “I thought, Damn, she’s gonna see us talking about some stupid stuff, but whatever,” recalls a former marketing manager named Emily*. She hoped Korey would at least find the conversations funny.<p>That hope evaporated the next day when Korey began calling people into a room one by one. There, flanked by the company’s head of people and general counsel, she told six people they were being let go. “You’ve been discriminatory,” employees remember her saying. “... you no longer have a job at this company.” Emily, who is a person of color, was shocked. “That was jarring — three white people telling me I was racist,” she says.
<i>"Employees were not allowed to email each other, and direct messages were supposed to be used rarely (never about work, and only for small requests, like asking if someone wanted to eat lunch)."</i><p><a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/5/20995453/away-luggage-ceo-steph-korey-toxic-work-environment-travel-inclusion" rel="nofollow">https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/5/20995453/away-luggage-ceo...</a><p>Youch. Sounds like a cult. All work conversations in a channel where the CEO can eavesdrop and bust in for spurts of berating and micromanagement.
I was an initial hire at a company with a very similar culture of (the alleged) publicly abusing employees on Slack, with all the hyperbolic cultish nonsense, with plenty of gaslighting and classless psychological manipulation ("if you're on this team it means we think you're the best, but if you can't handle it, maybe we were wrong"), and even the breathless idolization of (all the worst parts of) Amazon to boot.<p>If you think you're in this situation now -- please: leave. I've since learned that these things are a dime a dozen, and by and large they go up in flames. And in the rare cases when they don't, it's still not worth it. In the worst case at the end of it you'll be burned out, emotionally exhausted, struggling with aggravated anxiety/depression/PTSD, not to mention the damage done to your personal relationships.<p>This kind of shit is literally abuse, and as such can do actual and severe damage to your life. Don't put up with it. Life is too short, and there's a lot more at stake than your time and labor. There are plenty of companies to work for including startups that won't do this to you.
This is a new low in corporate spin: "I hope everyone in this group appreciates the thoughtfulness I’ve put into creating this career development opportunity and that you’re all excited to operate consistently with our core values", or in English, "You should be grateful that I'm cancelling all your PTO" (srsly wtf).
Human brains naturally look for patterns. Those patterns have a uniform distribution with respect to the probability of them actually explaining the data.<p>I remember pretty clearly when I first started seeing "the game", which is the politics that course through an organization like the wind through a mountain forest. It can be pretty heady at first, it is like wearing the special sunglasses in "They Live", but for me I also "saw" some things that weren't actually there at all. And acting on what I think I saw resulted in modest embarrassment and some awkwardness.<p>So with experience, I learned to take what I saw with a bit of skepticism and to figure out ways I could "test", without revealing what I suspected to be true, whether or not something was what was actually going on.<p>That test for Gruber was apparently the belief that you "cannot" hire a new CEO from another large company in the short amount of time that Away did it, so the "truth" (or what is "really" going on) is that the Verge story was cover for the swap and distracting from the distasteful element that a woman in technology was being forced out and a man coming in to replace her.<p>I don't think that would be enough for me. Over my career I have met with a number of executive search firms, both helping them to identify good candidates, and sometimes as the candidate they were vetting for a possible move. And that experience showed me that executives are just as trigger happy as employees are for the 'right' move. That is especially true near the top because the only way you move into the 'big' seat is for the person in it to be ejected, and that can be a slow process for an aggressive person. Watching Ed Zander give up on Scott ever stepping down so that he could take over Sun he bailed and went to Motorola. It's a common story. So for me, I can see that if you talked to the right executive search firm, they might have a couple of candidates that were already 'loose in the socket' as they say. But it also can't be a "hopeless" company, like Uber seemed to be when Kalanick was clearly on the way out. But 'start up founder can't grow into the role' is a common enough reason to slot in someone who has more experience, and if it moves an executive closer to their ultimate goal, not as hard to pull off as you might think. (I'll admit it is probably easier for CTO roles than CEO roles but still)<p>I am not saying that Gruber is wrong, I agree it is a plausible explanation. I just don't see the evidence as being as definitive as he does.
> If a waiter served a customer a half-eaten sandwich, I’d expect the manager to immediately berate him in front of the other staff in the kitchen — not take him aside and say “Hey, that isn’t cool.”<p>Gross.<p>Korey's own words, about teaching her direct reports "accountability" by asking them to work overtime, presumably unpaid, is gross.<p>Korey's own actions, by forcing all employees to talk publicly in Slack channels in "the interest of transparency", and then firing those who talk about problems at the company, is gross.<p>If this level of irresponsibility made its way to the board, PR disaster in stow, you sure imagine they'd try to get rid of her quick.
I worked with a company that worked with Away, Steph in particular, and her abrasive style bled through to our entire company. Without diving into specifics, she wasn't able to manage her own expectations on an important issue and threatened to write a bad review of us. She was known by our whole company as being someone who messed up on her end and rather than take blame internally she blamed it on us. I get that founders are under a lot of pressure, but she was hard up to repeat the success she saw at Warby Parker and it was evident she was willing to be a crummy person to work with if it looked like things were not headed in that direction regardless of who was at fault.
Putting the specifics of the Away memo aside, the laws regarding policing employee speech are actually more complicated than Gruber seems to understand. See this NLRB decision for a fuller understanding of the complexities:<p><a href="https://www.employerlawreport.com/2015/10/articles/labor-relations/second-circuit-upholds-nlrb-finding-that-triple-play-sports-grille-unlawfully-terminated-employees-for-facebook-postings/" rel="nofollow">https://www.employerlawreport.com/2015/10/articles/labor-rel...</a><p>Of course, it's a different NLRB than it was when that decision was made.
Given that they got Lululemons’ COO, they probably already had a contract with him/her. After the article came out they probably sped up when they were going to announce it.<p>Also I feel like a lot of this type of stuff is coming out now towards the holiday season so that a lot of people would somewhat forget about everything thats going on now.
The idea that a business with hundreds of employees can be run entirely through public Slack is shockingly stupid.<p>Sorry for the harsh words, but this demonstrates complete incompetence and zero business experience from Steph Korey all the way to the investors.<p>Away is clearly yet another terrible company that would have died long ago if not for VC life support.
I read The Verge daily, and generally like what they do, but they are definitely working the outrage factor for eyeballs.<p>Today's editorial from Casey Newton is a another data point: He tries to drag Slack into the controversy by claiming that it is 'not really neutral' and that it contributed to the CEO's downfall by allowing her to so easily berate employees and create a permanent record - as if email never existed.
Well, if you want to be like Steph, there's a great Skillshare page by her <a href="https://www.skillshare.com/profile/Steph-Korey/9215939" rel="nofollow">https://www.skillshare.com/profile/Steph-Korey/9215939</a><p>Key Lessons:<p>- Why consistent feedback builds trust
- How to embrace mistakes (and share your own with your team)
- Why you should let go of giving answers, and start asking questions
- How to treat you staff like shit<p>Wait. sorry I added the last one.. and only the last one :o) Okay #TrollingDone
Outside of the behavior of the CEO, I'm genuinely curious what it is about their luggage that's supposed to be a unique selling point?<p>I went on their site, and it looks like it's just another carry-on suitcase that's durable and has a charging port. What's the big deal?
Off the topic : A decent suitcase, without battery, costs about 225 USD, as per their website.<p>In India Rupees, that about 15,000 Rs. In India, the costliest similar suitcase, from a well regarded brand, VIP is about 10,500 Rs. ( <a href="https://www.vipbags.com/product/fairway-graphite" rel="nofollow">https://www.vipbags.com/product/fairway-graphite</a> )<p>Are suitcases so costly to produce? Or is the cost the cumulative effect of overheads?<p>15,000 Rs. is the median monthly income for many jobs in India. Especially service jobs.<p>What is it about Away suitcases that demand such high prices?
> But read the memo. Away wasn’t “clamping down on employee speech” — they were dealing with a serious PR crisis. What company in the midst of a PR crisis would not tell employees not to talk about it?<p>I think they were pretty clearly cracking down on employee speech. Telling them what they are allowed to do on their personal accounts outside of work hours really rubs me the wrong way regardless of whether or not they are in crisis mode.
I don't know why this article complicates the situation. She apologized for incidents that occurred last year, Verge reported on those incidents and those incidents prompted the board to find her replacement:
<a href="https://twitter.com/stephkorey/status/1203051598961954816" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/stephkorey/status/1203051598961954816</a>
Wait. Pause.<p>I read the verge article. They put people through that kind of bullshit in NYC for 40 grand a year? Are you kidding me?<p>(yes, well aware that many people make less than that. But sheesh... it's the Devil wears Prada updated for 2019)
I just can't believe that the COO of an extremely successful company like Lulu Lemon (LULO market cap $30B) would make the jump to a suitcase marketing company? How many suitcases do you buy in a decade? Seems like a demotion.
I hate to bring gender into this, but I do wonder if Gruber would raise such a stink if it was just a male CEO getting fired for this.<p>And as for his example of:<p>"If a waiter served a customer a half-eaten sandwich, I’d expect the manager to immediately berate him in front of the other staff in the kitchen — not take him aside and say “Hey, that isn’t cool.”<p>I would think it is highly inappropriate to berate a staff member in front of other staff. That doesn't inspire leadership. Instead you would take them aside and talk to them personally about what they had done, and talk to all staff as a whole about the need to do better and explain the importance of customer service and that a happy customer is likely to refer 2 other people, but a dissatisfied person is likely to tell 20, so we need to stop people from being dissatisfied (within reason).<p>In all of my roles, from retail, consulting, government, and everything else, it has never been appropriate to berate staff.