CEO says management often the last to hear bad internal news. You’ll never guess what happens next.
Shares of database software company MongoDB have gotten shellacked since the close on Thursday, falling nearly 25% after the company posted quarterly earnings that missed expectations and took a hatchet to its full-year outlook.
Life comes at you fast: just two weeks earlier, an episode of Patrick O’Shaughnessy’s “Invest Like the Best” podcast aired where CEO Dev Ittycheria discussed how there’s a tendency for management to be the last to know about any problems festering in their own companies.
“Because I know when I hear bad news, I know two things,” he said. “One, I'm the last to know and two, it's far worse than what people tell me because the filtration process of sending bad news up the organization dulls all the sharp edges of that bad information.”
But, he added, “Now we don’t have that culture here at MongoDB. I’m just describing what a typical organization goes through.”
Well, judging by the market/Wall Street’s reaction, we can revise that to the second-last to know. Analysts at at least a dozen brokerages have cut their price target for the company since the results dropped.
(Hat tip to @ChipsAhoyCap for flagging on X)
But, he added, “Now we don’t have that culture here at MongoDB. I’m just describing what a typical organization goes through.”
Well, judging by the market/Wall Street’s reaction, we can revise that to the second-last to know. Analysts at at least a dozen brokerages have cut their price target for the company since the results dropped.
(Hat tip to @ChipsAhoyCap for flagging on X)
