CEO Jack Dorsey aims to boost company morale by giving a third of his Twitter stock to employees

[midian182]

On Thursday evening, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced at a staff meeting and on the microblogging site that he would donate about a third of his Twitter stock to the company’s employees. The shares amount to 1 percent of the company and are worth about $200 million. Dorsey said it will go into the employee stock compensation pool “to reinvest directly in our people.”

“I’d rather have a smaller part of something big than a bigger part of something small,” Dorsey tweeted. “I’m confident we can make Twitter big!”

?⚡️ I'm giving ~1/3rd of my Twitter stock (exactly 1% of the company) to our employee equity pool to reinvest directly in our people.

— Jack (@jack) October 23, 2015

The move is likely to be partly aimed at improving employee morale at Twitter, which took a battering after Dorsey laid off 8 percent of the company’s global workforce last week. It also marks the second week in a row that the Twitter founder has given away millions in stock. Last week, Dorsey – who is also CEO of Square – disclosed in the mobile payment company’s IPO filing that he would donate 40 million shares, or 10 percent of the total stock outstanding, to the Start Small Foundation. These were added to the 15 million shares he had already donated to both Square and the charity, which invests in artists, musicians and local businesses in underserved communities.

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer revealed last week that he has become the third-biggest individual shareholder in Twitter after taking a 4 percent stake in the company. It means that Ballmer owns more of Twitter than Dorsey, who now has a 2 percent stake. The other holders of large amounts of Twitter stock include company co-founder Evan Williams, who has a 6.8 percent stake, and Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who holds more than 5 percent.

Twitter will announce its third-quarter earnings next week on Oct. 27.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/62537-ceo-jack-dorsey-aims-boost-company-morale-giving.html

 

[RzmmDX]

Just saying, he could have that money to not layoff those workers.

Unless they were absolutely terrible at their jobs.

 

[VitalyT]

Just saying, he could have that money to not layoff those workers.

Unless they were absolutely terrible at their jobs.

To be more precise, they had 4100 employees, of which 8% is 328, against the 200m the CEO spends, that's about 610K per employee, enough to keep your low-paid worker for 10+ years.

I don't know what was he thinking. Must be something wrong with his calculator.

 

[mctommy]

Just saying, he could have that money to not layoff those workers.

Unless they were absolutely terrible at their jobs.

To be more precise, they had 4100 employees, of which 8% is 328, against the 200m the CEO spends, that's about 610K per employee, enough to keep your low-paid worker for 10+ years.

I don't know what was he thinking. Must be something wrong with his calculator.

You gotta run a company leaner and not feed the underperformers. I'd have done the same, up the retention of those who made the cut by giving incentives that vest in x years.

 

[davislane1]

Just saying, he could have that money to not layoff those workers.

Unless they were absolutely terrible at their jobs.

Keeping unnecessary, costly, or underperforming employees around is bad for the long-term health of the business. It's not as simple as throwing surplus money at people for the sake of altruism.

 

[yRaz]

Just saying, he could have that money to not layoff those workers.

Unless they were absolutely terrible at their jobs.

Keeping unnecessary, costly, or underperforming employees around is bad for the long-term health of the business. It's not as simple as throwing surplus money at people for the sake of altruism.

As someone who has run their own small business I can't agree with this more. I'm not going to lose everything I've worked for because of other peoples idealism. It's not easy when you have to fire a "nice guy" because he can't do his job, but being a nice guy isn't enough to keep your job.

People will react to this guy differently because he's a hot shot CEO in the eyes of the people, but the other employees will keep their jobs and perhaps have opportunity to move up where they didn't before. At least by giving away $200 million of his own money he is showing that his decision was not one he made to line his own pockets at the expense of the employees