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The Other Shoe Drops: Away Fires CEO Steph Korey After Months-Long Search for Her Replacement, Hacker News

The Other Shoe Drops: Away Fires CEO Steph Korey After Months-Long Search for Her Replacement, Hacker News


 

Monday, 9 December 20995453

Charity L. Scott, reporting for The Wall Street Journal, “Online Luggage Startup Away Says CEO Is Stepping Down”:

  

Away, an online seller of luggage that investors valued at $ 1.4 billion earlier this year, Chief Executive Steph Korey is stepping down.

Ms. Korey will become executive chairman of the New York City-based startup. Stuart Haselden, who is departing as chief operating officer at Lululemon Athletica Inc., will succeed her as CEO, according to the company. Away co-founder Jen Rubio will remain president and chief brand officer.

The news comesafter an article in the Verge last weekcriticized Ms. Korey’s management style as harsh, citing several former employees unhappy with the work environment. Ms. Korey apologizedin a statement on Twitterlast week, saying she has worked with an executive coach to “improve as a leader.”

Away said the CEO search has been under way since this spring, and Mr. Haselden will take over Jan. (****************************************. Lululemon announced his departure Monday.

[Disclosure:Away has sponsored 21 episodes of my podcast,The Talk Show, in the last three years, and they are on the schedule for an upcoming episode. The following is what I’d write if they never had and never would sponsor my show or website.]

It surely is not spin that Away’s board – led by Rubio, Korey’s fellow co-founder – had been searching to replace Korey for months. You can’t hire the COO of Lululemon in three days in light of a PR crisis.

So I think it’s pretty clear that the Verge inadvertently got played. They got fed the story and ran with it in a way that pinned all of the company’s purported cultural problems on Korey. All six sources were anonymous former employees (and, coincidentally or not, women). There was a lot aboutthat Verge storythat struck me as weird. Whyshouldn’tthe CEO be furious that the company somehow sent customers suitcases that had been used in a beach photo shoot and were covered with sand and other debris?(1) ********** But one of the strangest things was that while it was ostensibly a story about the company, the actual story felt almost entirely like a hit on Korey, personally. No other executive’s Slack messages were quoted as evidence of the perceived cultural problems.(2) **********

So now the narrative is not “Away fires woman CEO and co-founder, replaces her with a man”. Instead, the narrative is “Away fires CEO who created‘ toxic culture ’, brings in fresh leadership” – a narrative that wouldn’t be possible without the Verge’s story last Thursday. It also seems clear that Korey had no idea this was coming –her statement on Twitterresponding to The Verge report sure doesn ‘t sound like the words of a woman who realizes her company board was on the cusp of replacing her after a months-long executive search.

It’s entirely possible that Korey really was responsible for a “toxic work culture”, and the truthful narrative really is “Away fires CEO who created‘ toxic culture ’, brings in fresh leadership”. I’m just pointing out it beggars belief that it’s pure coincidence this story leaked to the vergejust beforeAway was set to fire Korey, such that when the company made the announcement the controversy was still fresh in everyone’s minds.

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