The ship lost it's captain... and the ships clerk took the helm
Pros
Troy (the leaving founder) was an incredibly brilliant leader! He had such clarity and understanding across all aspects of the company: from the customer, to the market, deep into the technology — and how it all unfolded into the future, and what a product roadmap looks like to solve for each of those things. He brought energy and direction to the company that is impossible to replace. He was imaginative, intense, and deeply committed to the mission. He could take a complex technical or organizational problem 5 layers deep, then thread it back up to a larger vision of solving market and planet-scale problems in a way that made people want to contribute.
Cons
The new leadership isn’t competent. It has been 2 weeks, and I’ve seen enough. They are high on their own kool-aide, but aren’t listening to real concerns, and people are afraid to speak their minds. Meanwhile the company direction and technology leadership has been thrown into disarray, and the new leadership doesn’t seem to have a clue what they are doing. Without Troy, the company now feels like a chaotic free-for-all. Worse, the new “leadership” is treating the team like the lack of direction is some kind of gift. It's bizarre. And it’s more insidious than that: the least informed people are now leading the most informed.
