While many outside the tech sector would assume it’s most everyone’s aspiration to be CEO of a large technology company, it appears that those with this actual title do not see it as being something worth holding on to.
On Wednesday, April 27, solar energy firm First Solar’s CEO Jim Hughes announced that he will step down from his position, and hand off responsibilities of his job to CFO Mark Windmar.
The following morning, on Thursday, April 28, CEO T.J. Rodgers of Cypress Semiconductor said that he would be stepping down immediately, and that the company would handle finding a replacement. In the meantime, his responsibilities will be split among four different executive vice presidents.
In the retirement announcement, Rodgers made it sound like he’d be playing around with a few ideas that could potentially improve the company’s profit margins:
This March, Valeta and I celebrated my 68th birthday in Mexico. Upon reflection, while I am still passionately interested in Element 14, silicon, I have always planned not to be spending most of my time in the last decade of my career immersed in the details of the operations, including those of the 7,000-person company that Cypress has become. And, to be completely candid, the board and even the executive staff have urged me to bring new blood into operations. Thus, the first-quarter 2016 report, my 120th as Cypress’s CEO, will be my last. More importantly to me, I will now be able to work full time on the technology that has fascinated me since my mother first kindled my interest in electronics when I was a fifth-grader. I have always reserved about 30 percent of my time to work on technology and one key project. This activity adds value to the company and remains of high interest to me at this stage of my career. In the future Cypress management will be able to assign a key project to me and count on it getting done right.
On the same day Rodgers announced he was bowing out of his position, so too did Michael Brown, CEO of security technology vendor Symantec. Brown said that he would officially step down as soon as the company found a successor, a process that the board has already begun.
Chairman Dan Schulman thanked Brown for his contributions as CEO to Symantec. Further clarity for the decision was provided in a company comment on the matter, which cited a shift in corporate tech buying habits:
A shift in enterprise security customer buying preferences is resulting in less license revenue during the quarter and more revenue being deferred to future periods. This included a faster than expected shift within our product mix to subscription and ratable contract structures […] The shift to more ratable revenue is consistent with our unified security strategy, as more customers are buying security offerings that require continuous protection and monitoring to remain up-to-date and protected against the latest threats.
Also on Thursday, Priceline announced that its CEO, Darren Huston, would be resigning from his position, though for slightly less celebrated reasons. Per the company’s comment on the resignation decision:
Mr. Huston resigned following an investigation overseen by independent members of the Board of Directors of the facts and circumstances surrounding a personal relationship that Mr. Huston had with an employee of the Company who was not under his direct supervision. The investigation determined that Mr. Huston had acted contrary to the Company’s Code of Conduct and had engaged in activities inconsistent with the Board’s expectations for executive conduct, which Mr. Huston acknowledged and for which he expressed regret.
The company’s chairman, Jeffrey Boyd, will step in as interim chief while a potential successor is sought out.
What’s your take on this? Is this simply a coincidence of timing, or is it a reflection of something bigger?
Via Barron’s
Advertisement
Learn more about Electronic Products Magazine
