Dan Schulman is stepping in as Verizon’s new CEO. At PayPal he built a reputation for being employee-centric, even raising wages and improving benefits for frontline staff. He talks about purpose and fairness, not just profit. Is this the turning of the page for Verizon?
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This guy is not the saving grace for VZ. The company has slid so far down into the sl--e at the bottom of the barrel, it will be difficult to right the ship and all this guy will do is cut more employee jobs and reduce pricing. Most have found out that VZ is no longer needed to have reliable coverage and today they can have this coverage at much lower rates with other carriers. This is the wrong guy but I really do not care. I spent almost 30 years at VZ and got f'd by my boss. The majority of the employees that I had worked with since 2000 had already been laid off and for the most part were all hard working and believed in VZ until the day they were sh*tcanned. What does anyone truly expect from a 67 year old with zero wireless experience? About the same amount of turmoil as a Swede that had finished driving a major company into the ground. To see the sentiment around Wall Street, the stock price dropped 3 to 5% the day of the announcement. The people that truly need to go at VZ are the Board of Directors, then move to the majority of the Executives, especially those hired by the Swede. The final cuts should go to the worthless, useless HR department.
@cq
agree to an extent, but you have to have employees buy into the vision and the goals. Notice how once CoVid started, the ship just floated along, no adhesion, no tangible goals, no goals accomplished. Working in FP&A, I was able to see it first hand, salespeople churning and burning customers, shaving a few cents here or there but not really selling solutions.
If nothing is being solved for the customer, they're going to look elsewhere and TMUS was more than happy to not only deliver on price but on the network too.
Looking back at Verizon’s last seven years, the story is bigger than any single executive or decision. It’s a case study in what happens when a company builds world-class infrastructure but never truly builds the future around it.
Verizon invested billions in spectrum, built the strongest network in the industry, and maintained a brand trusted by millions. Yet growth flatlined. New revenue streams never materialized. Competitors caught up — and in many cases, passed them. Why? Because strategy and culture stayed rooted in an era that no longer exists.
Leadership focused on engineering instead of ecosystems, on defending the past instead of designing what’s next. Entire divisions were run by smart, capable people who were nevertheless wired for incremental change, not reinvention. A deeply entrenched “IT mafia” obsessed over complex internal systems while product innovation lagged behind. And the consumer business — once Verizon’s crown jewel — was treated like a utility when it should have evolved into a platform.
The lesson is simple but sobering: you can’t transform a company without transforming the people, incentives, and culture behind it. Infrastructure is important, but it’s only the foundation. Without bold execution, relentless experimentation, and leadership willing to break its own playbook, even the best-built network will remain just that — a network.
As Verizon enters the Schulman era, the hope is that this time the company starts with the basics: rebuilding trust with customers, creating real value beyond connectivity, and most importantly, cleaning house at the leadership level. Because without a fundamental reset of who’s driving the change, the next chapter risks looking a lot like the last one — and this time, Verizon may not get another chance.
@OP yeah...he fired 7% of the workforce at PayPal in 2023. He used the exact same wording he used in his intro...we have to make difficult decisions but we'll make them together.
No we went from a meatball to a full flege zio.
@a6: yes, you are absolutely correct but way back when = its been just about 10-years of Hans, nothing but business-as-usual, meaning, transcending, no gain but all pain!!! Please share my pain???
I crossed paths with Dan Schulman when he was President of AT&T's Consumer Services division, then at Virgin Mobile USA.
He wasn't able to make a measurable difference at AT&T and the business was shut down not long after. At Virgin he leveraged the globally recognized Virgin Mobile brand, and built a decent sized reseller that Sprint later overpaid to acquire.
I will say this, he wasn't afraid to Institute layoffs when needed so watch out Verizon Basking Ridge crowd it's surely coming your way!
Many of the current execs will start to weed themselves out. We are going to start to see who the new combined VZ FTR leadership team will be. Those not chosen will gracefully exit just like they did when Hans was selected way back when.
There’s no turning point in finance until he cleans out toxic legacy leadership that burns out their team with 200 page decks and never ending pointless firedrills.