

If you’re a senior manager, you want to become a director.


He continued, “If you’re a manager, you want to become a senior manager. He noted that when there’s no real constraint on hiring, “you hire someone, and the first thing that person wants to do is hire other people.” The reason, he explained, is that “it’s a very obvious signal, and it’s very true, that the more people who report to you, the higher your prestige, the more your power in the organization.” This is what happens,” he told Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast this week. “Even back then, it was apparent-we would say in interviews, this is just zero interest rate. So Butterfield knows what the Fed-induced easy money era was like for tech startups. The billionaire now buys luxury real estate with his wife, Away cofounder Jen Rubio. Salesforce then acquired the venture for $27 billion, and earlier this year Butterfield left the company, admitting that he “wasn’t very successful” at integrating the two cultures. Butterfield cofounded the messaging startup in 2009 and watched its valuation rise dramatically in the following years, with one massive funding round following another until its successful IPO in 2019.
