In the letter, Mayer said “In recent weeks, as the political environment has sharply changed, I have done significant reflection on what the corporate structural changes will require, and what it means for the global role I signed up for. Against this backdrop, and as we expect to reach a resolution very soon, it is with a heavy heart that I wanted to let you all know that I have decided to leave the company.”

His departure comes suddenly, while the company is still negotiating that deal, and just a month after he promised a push for transparency while hoping to turn perception of the app around. He called TikTok’s future “bright” and said “I want to be clear that this decision has nothing to do with the company, what I see for our future, or the belief I have in what we are building. Yiming understands my decision and I thank him for his support on this.”

Incredibly excited to join the team at Bose as the new CEO starting on September 1. This incredible team has been creating products and experiences that make people’s lives better for over 50 years. Can’t wait to get started. #bose

— Lila Snyder (@lilajosnyder) August 20, 2020

“We wanted the absolute best person, no matter how long the search took,” Bose chairman Bob Maresca told CNET. “Lila’s background, experience, track record and values are right for Bose, for the exceptional people who work here, and for our amazing customers who count on us every day.”

While the tech world has boosted its efforts to bring more women into the industry, the gains have been marginal. Google’s overall workforce, for instance, is only 32 percent women. Of those, 52 percent are white and 42 percent are Asian. Only six percent are Latinx and 3.7 percent are Black. The disparities are even more apparent when you look at the number of men versus women in CEO and leadership positions.

Bose doesn’t report its earnings, but Snyder is likely stepping in to the company at a difficult time. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, Bose announced plans to close all of its US and European stores, and earlier this summer it shut down its AR development. It consistently produces some of the best noise-cancelling audio gear, but we’re still waiting on the company’s long-promised noise-cancelling wireless earbuds.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi tells @SRuhle the ride-hailing app would have to shut down in the state of California until at least November if a judge’s ruling that Uber must treat drivers as employees instead of independent contractors fails to be appealed by the company. pic.twitter.com/ntAMMxf4Cf

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) August 12, 2020

This all started last fall, when California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the state’s Assembly Bill 5 labor law. The legislation was meant to fix the gig economy by reclassifying workers as employees, but companies like Uber and Postmates quickly filed lawsuits calling the move unconstitutional. 

Assembly Bill 5 was supposed to go into effect on January 1st, 2020. While Uber says it made changes and believes it’s in compliance, the state feels otherwise. Earlier this week, California won a preliminary injunction against Uber and Lyft. The court order could block the companies from classifying drivers as independent contractors. Uber and Lyft were given 10 days to appeal the ruling, and if things do not go in their favor, Khosrowshahi says Uber will temporarily suspend service in the state.

Shutting down Uber’s ridesharing service in California is obviously not ideal, especially when so many people are facing job insecurity due to the pandemic. But Khosrowshahi says Uber would have no other choice. The company would then wait until the November election, when California voters will be able to decide whether companies like Uber could keep drivers as freelancers.

Ultimately, if Uber is forced to classify its drivers as employees in California, Khosrowshahi says Uber’s model will change substantially. Users would likely see higher rates and fewer ride options. The service would also likely be concentrated in cities. Though, Khosrowshahi says he doesn’t believe that outcome is likely.

It does sound a bit like Khosrowshahi is giving the state and courts an ultimatum, but he insists that Uber would simply have no other option and would need time to switch from its current gig model.

After guiding Disney through the acquisition of Fox and launching its direct-to-consumer efforts that center around Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu, CEO Bob Iger is stepping down from his post. “Effective immediately,” former Disney Parks Chairman Bob Chapek is taking over and will report to Iger while he serves as executive chairman and leads “creative endeavors” through the end of his contract next year.

In a statement announcing the move, Iger said “”With the successful launch of Disney’s direct-to-consumer businesses and the integration of Twenty-First Century Fox well underway, I believe this is the optimal time to transition to a new CEO.”

As far as Chapek’s experience, he’s worked there for more than two decades, and the press release notes that he spearheaded the infamous “Disney Vault” strategy for handling its iconic films as they were released for home viewing on VHS, DVD and Blu-ray.

Asked on a call with investors about the timing of the move, Iger said that it made sense to turn over day-to-day management of the company to Chapek so that he can use his remaining time to focus on creative aspects of the company. According to him, the move wasn’t accelerated “for any particular reason.”

With Chapek continuing to report to Iger, it doesn’t seem like things materially change at Disney much right now, but the move is announced right after the company revealed Disney+ has already grown to over 26 million subscribers. It’s also preparing to launch widely in Europe, and we’re still months out from the arrival of The Mandalorian season two and tons of Baby Yoda merchandise.

Roh, who came on board with Samsung in 1997, helped develop the Galaxy device lineup and is supposedly a stickler for engineering and design. He’ll reportedly try to bolster Samsung’s reputation for quality after it stumbled over the past few years. Under Koh, Samsung was forced to kill the flammable Galaxy Note 7 and had to delay the Galaxy Fold due to issues with the display.

Roh’s primary goals will be to shepherd foldable products into the mainstream and help Samsung expand in China and India. Roh is also known as a cost-cutter who outsourced smartphone production to better compete with aggressive Chinese rivals like Huawei, Xiaomi and Oppo. He’ll be getting to work right away, as Samsung should be unveiling its new Galaxy S20 flagship series and possibly a second-generation foldable device at a February 11th event in San Francisco.

We were blind, and our eyes were opened by zeros and ones. The tech utopia was at hand, and we should just sit back and not ask too many hard questions.

Then things went sideways. Social networks that were the catalyst of the Arab Spring were suddenly being used by nation-states, shit posters and bot armies to destroy democracy and fuel racial violence. Using public roads to beta test software resulted in deaths and of course billions of dollars were essentially wasted. The messiahs thought-leaders innovators disrupters run-of-the-mill ultra-capitalists who promised a better tomorrow crumbled under the slightest scrutiny.

People started asking questions, and the answers weren’t what tech promised.

As the year came to a close, The Verge revealed that Away (which makes suitcases with batteries in them. I guess that means they’re a tech company) CEO Steph Korey was abusing employees via Slack. After the usual mealy-mouthed apology, Korey was fired.

There have been the usual back-and-forth articles and think pieces about whether Korey was targeted and/or if the dismissal was warranted. The reason some people might feel like treating employees badly shouldn’t be a fireable offense is that a long time ago most of us excused the behavior of Steve Jobs. There are far too many stories of Jobs’ cruelty to employees. We allowed it because “OMG, look at that shiny new iPhone” and “Wow, the MacBooks are so great.” Oh also, he saved Apple from complete collapse.

A generation of tech CEOs believed that this is how you manage a company. It’s not, and now their bad behavior is being called out by employees that work long hours in high-stress situations all hoping they’ll make it big via an eventual IPO. Dear CEOs, You’re not Steve Jobs. Stop trying to be Steve Jobs.

By the end of 2019, on the other side of the spectrum was the tech CEO who thought everything was a party. WeWork CEO Adam Neumann burned through billions of Softbank’s (and other investors’) money. The “visionary” offered up shared office space for thousands of startups and a few publications. Subletting space to those in need seems like a good idea. Hotboxing private jets and buying the real estate that your company is leasing, not so much. Ahead of its IPO, investors took a good look at Neumann’s company and realized that it was incinerating cash: $1.9 billion last year to be precise. In the first half of 2019, it lost $904 million. The real estate wunderkind was let go and for all his failures he got a sweet golden parachute of $1.7 billion in shares and loans. Meanwhile WeWork employees have been let go in the wake of his management decisions.

Tossing other people’s money into a pit of snake oil-fueled flames was the basis for the HBO documentary The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, about the rise and fall of Theranos and, more importantly, its CEO Elizabeth Holmes. We all knew the story thanks to the Wall Street Journal’s John Carreyrou’s investigation of the company way back in 2015. But seeing this unfold on our TVs in 2019 was a reminder that even though things didn’t seem right at the company, Silicon Valley’s sway as the answer to all the world’s ills blinded established companies, reporters and members of the US government.

The blinders that allowed companies like Theranos continuing to bilk people and companies out of money are not just turned outward. Sometimes, the person in charge seems to have no sense of what’s going on. Jack Dorsey wants to be the cuddly “woke” CEO of tech. At the end of 2018 Dorsey tweeted about his silent retreat in Myanmar. The country that has committed genocide and spread hateful propaganda via social media. He issued the usual non-apology apology. Then his account was hacked via an SMS SIM hijack.

This type of hack has been around for a while but it wasn’t until the CEO was compromised that the company put the brakes on the ability of Tweet via SMS. It felt like things were only worth fixing or updating if it affected the boss.

Twitter’s been a headache for another CEO. After some rather weird, unlawful and downright dangerous tweets about his company, reporters and individuals, Musk seems to have tamed his tweets as of late. His company is making a profit, and Tesla is building test vehicles at the new China factory. But, his past Twitter behavior came back to haunt him in the form of a lawsuit brought by the diver he called a “pedo guy.”

The jury found that Musk was not guilty of libel. But being hauled into court for calling someone a child molester via a tweet is never a good look. It’s ridiculous. Also, because of the trial, we found out that Musk hired a private investigator that was a convicted felon to dig up dirt on the diver. Musk’s fans truly believe he will save the world. If that’s his plan, awesome. But maybe concentrate more on climate change and less on hurt feelings and Twitter fights.

Lost money, angry tweets, unsafe medical practices and being blind to the woes of the world should not be something that shows up on the resume of a CEO. But the actual coup d’etat is the destruction of democracy.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared before Congress again in 2019 (the litany of misleading statements he gave in his 2018 appearance concerning election tampering and Cambridge Analytica kept fact-checkers busy) to answer for his company’s Cryptocurrency scheme Libra and paid political ads on his platform. It didn’t go well. But he still insisted that his company would continue to allow politicians to lie in ads on his platform.

Zuckerberg always mumbles something about Facebook not policing free speech, which is a hilarious shield for a company that’s kicked abuse survivors off its platform for using pseudonyms or, worse, changed their names without their consent making them targets. The company has also policed and banned accounts and ads which it deemed has violated its nudity guidelines for ridiculous reasons. Like an ad for a breast cancer nonprofit.

Oh also this year he rewrote the history of Facebook during a college commencement speech laughably citing the first Iraq war as a reason he built his social network. In reality, he built a “Hot or Not” clone for Harvard classmates then decided to expand it for dating.

After years of essentially lying to the press, investors and the government, Mark Zuckerberg and his company continue to make a staggering amount of money on the backs of those lies.

Most of these CEOs are still rich. Golden parachutes, expensive lawyers and great quarterly numbers mean we’ll see these folks again. Some will fail upward. Some might get better. Others won’t.

What’s important is that, maybe once and for all, we’ll see that tech CEOs are not going to save the world. Like CEOs in other industries, they care more about making themselves and their investors rich. 2019 showed us that we’re not better off because of these folks. If anything, things have gotten worse. Technology and billionaires won’t make the world better. It’s up to us.

LG moved its executives around and switched up the head for its mobile business more than once over the past couple of years. Back in 2017, the company named Hwang Jeong-hwan as president of mobile in an effort to make the unit more competitive until he was replaced by Kwon. Under Kwon’s leadership, LG’s mobile business managed to narrow its losses in the third quarter of 2019. While it’s now up to Lee to find ways to make the unit profitable, LG says that going forward, it plans to focus on businesses with strong potential, such as smart home products.

Exclusive: In scathing email, Apple CEO Tim Cook tells me the @WSJ report about Jony Ive’s departure — and his frustration with Cook’s alleged lack of interest in design — is “absurd.” Says reporting and conclusions “don’t match with reality.”

Full story coming soon @NBCNews … pic.twitter.com/QX9L4MvjFs

— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) July 1, 2019

In the message, Cook called the story “absurd” and said its conclusions “don’t match with reality.” He didn’t call out specific things he disagreed with, but claimed it failed to understand how Apple or its internal design team works, and that “It distorts relationships, decisions and events to the point that we just don’t recognize the company it claims to describe.”

The article noted that Ive declined to comment, but there’s the official Apple side of things. In closing, Cook backed Ive’s previous statement that the design team is “stronger than ever” and said “The products they’re working on will blow you away.” Most of Tim Cook’s notable emails usually go out to Apple employees, but this does bring to mind a 2012 message he sent to a blogger defending the hiring of John Browett as Senior VP of retail. Browett was fired later that same year.

In a statement, Sherman acknowledged GameStop will have to undergo some major changes to stay relevant in a market that has increasingly gone digital. “I bring significant experience working with other retailers that have undergone large, successful transformations,” he said, suggesting that he expects similar changes at GameStop.

According to VentureBeat, sources familiar with the company say Sherman’s hiring is part of the company’s “GameStop 2.0” plan that will shift the company from a retailer to a “cultural experience.” The company reportedly plans to focus on membership programs that encourage trade-ins and purchases of pre-owned games. GamesSop may also explore turning stores into an environment in which gamers can come in, hang out, and try out games before buying them.

GameStop has undergone quite a bit of turmoil in recent years. Digital marketplaces like Steam and the recently launched Epic Games Store have cut into the company’s business. GameStop shut down 150 of its retail stores in 2017 and rumors of a buyout started bubbling up last year.