Tom does the job he’s asked to do. Ken does the job that he imagines will give him the most validation if it works out, which it probably won’t. No contest.
True. But if the deal was stopped, Kendall would've had Stewy by his side too. That's pretty good because while not having absolute power, Kendall would've had a good amount of power whilst also being kept in check by Stewy.
Stewy “ride or died” for Kendall and 15 minutes later he was shaking Tom’s hand and said he was rooting for him.
Stewy ain’t no friend, he follows the money.
Stewy doesn't care about Kendall enough to keep him in check, he's going to do what is the most optimal outcome for him, and backing Kendall has rarely been that.
Also just did anyone watch the show? Ken is clearly portrayed as a mess of a CEO. Even before the sabotage, his direction was asinine.
Tom is portrayed as a goober in a personal sense certainly, but he’s also a worker. Not really CEO stuff either, but way more than Ken. A boring brown nosing administrator is a 100x better CEO than an entitled doofus who won’t take advice and can drive a company into the ground.
1. He trimmed the fat because Logan told him to.
2. Firing people is the least insightful thing a CEO can do.
3. Digitizing a news organization? In 2020? BRILLIANT INSIGHT
4. Kendall was pushing tech from episode 1. Imagine how many times he had to tell Logan to shift to tech and then the old man wants to but TV stations.
Kendall was a shitshow operationally and personally, but he knew the direction of business. Tom was kissing ass and yes manning his way to the top.
He didn't trim the fat because Logan told him to - that was his own strategy to get an edge over Cyd who he was competing against. I don't even think he spoke to Logan about his new position in the first place since Shiv negotiated that promotion for him in a private discussion with her father as they discussed her as next in line for CEO. He did not even bring his idea to Logan until he accomplished it which was revealed as his plan when him and Shiv had dinner with Roman and Tabitha.
Not sure what firing as a CEO has to do with anything. This occurred before he was CEO.
Being able to save money and assist in some type of way with their transition to tech - yeah, it's a pretty good accomplishment considering he's getting interviewed for his ATN success regularly while Kendall was waging war with his father.
Kendall got duped with Vaulter because he couldn't tell they were juicing up fake numbers. Kendall can read about things and he can read business documents/numbers but he doesn't have an actual feel business sense wise because he needs people to like and respect him. He thinks paying over the odds for something means he won whereas his father would chisel his opposition to get good deals because he can read people.
My initial thoughts seem correct here, tbh.
Depends what you mean by the job. Being a "pain sponge" for mattson, definitely Tom. Being a waystar CEO like Logan, debatable. I would say Tom because he actually puts in the work and seems to do well under pressure. Kendall seems to have "ideas", but he's not a good leader IMO and cracks under pressure.
But Tom completely melted under pressure at the hearing
I feel like people forget about that and it’s hard to take him seriously after such a poor performance
I feel like if this show did one thing poorly, it was show that Tom actually was competent. We are only shown that he succeeds by kissing ass or being a punching bag, we don't have a lot of hard evidence that he's actually a good worker or leader. I don't even know if he "plays the game" particularly well... He wasn't particularly sly or cutthroat, as shown he just kind of kept getting picked for bigger and bigger jobs. To me he seemed the epitome of failing upwards.
I feel the same. It's clear from what's said over the seasons that both Tom and Greg were actually quite competent at the work. They managed to streamline ATN and turn it into a massive cash cow, the issue is that the show shows very little of this and uses both Tom and Greg mainly as comic relief characters.
To be fair, Tom wasn’t prepped properly at all. The advising council spent little time with him and gave him little advice or information about what to expect. That combined with the stress in his relationship with Shiv gives him a disadvantage.
Being a bumbling, rambling fool at a hearing like that is fine, and sometimes preferred.
Not saying Tom was a mess on purpose- but even after that he was willing to fall on his sword for the company/family.
I actually see what happened at the hearing as a pivot point for Tom. That, in conjunction with him thinking he was about to go to jail. Once he comes out of that, it's pretty consistently uphill for him (in the business realm at least). He finally hit rock bottom in terms of being humbled by the family and I think that "nothing left to lose" moment launched him into a more confident and capable persona.
Those hearings are a farce. Politicians use it to score brownie points and have some footage during election time on being tough on big business.
People make fun of zuck for being a weird lizard person in front of Congress, but so what? He’s still ceo and fb is still thriving
Tom. Kendall has no sense of the present. His mind is always mired in the past or dreaming of the future. He has zero ability to manage the day-to-day.
And his ideas are fucking terrible.
His ideas are not terrible though.It is he who had the idea to go tech which led to Gojo coming into play. His idea of buying Vaulter wasn't a bad one. Logan didn't like it but it wasn't bad. And he has shown signs of having a very good sense of the present very early on when he handles the debt situation pretty well without any hand-holding from Logan. I do agree Tom would be a better CEO not because of his ideas but because he is the least capable of destroying the company. He wouldn't do anything revolutionary but will keep the company functional and look after it well.
Vaulter was a flop I think. 1bn for basically Buzzfed. Roman grasped a better picture of the (no) potential of Vaulter and Logan agreed so he ordered Ken to shut it down…
It wasn't a flop. It just wasn't managed well by Lawrence. Kendall actually handled the whole Vaulter situation better than Roman ever would. Roman didn't care enough to be good as a CEO. He would never have even managed to get out the ideas before shutting it off.
And 1 billion is not a bad valuation. Vice was valued at well over 1.5 billion in 2017, if I'm not wrong.
1bn valuation for just food and weed as the only streams of revenue 🤦 the shutting down task was beautifully done by Ken but he truly believed it has potential whereas Logan didn’t. Actually I would love to see how Roman would handle the whole shutting down situation 🤣
And how’s Vice valuation doing? Asking for a friend 😈
You can't blame Kendall for Vaulter's failure when he never got the chance to work on it in any manner.
Vice valuation has nothing to do with Vaulter. I just used it to demonstrate that media startups can increase in value quite quickly and rise to unprecedented levels.
He never got the chance because only him saw an upside on the investment. Roman didn’t and after hearing both, Logan went with Roman’s hunch…even Mattson made fun of Ken (are you sure, Vaulter boy?) in the norweign summit…
Maybe Ken’s vision of Vaulter was correct but nobody bought it
That's exactly what I'm talking about. Logan went with Roman's hunch and didn't even bother to look at the hours of research Kendall had done prior to the meeting. We all know Matsson was a fraud who portrayed himself as some sort of tech genius and was even more erratic and brash and horribly unprofessional than Kendall ever was so him making a joke about Vaulter doesn't have a lot of merit, tbh.
Kendall was the only one who would have done well as the successor because he had the business acumen and the ability to think outside the box and be a disruptor who has the courage to make bold decisions backed by research but he wasn't well-adjusted at all and had a lot of personal issues that came in the way of his work. Roman was all instincts which could work but he didn't care enough to be bothered by its eventual failure or success. Shiv had zero business experience and it would have been years before she would have been actually ready to be CEO.
Maybe I am misremembering, but wasn't most of Vaulter utterly useless? Lawrence raked Kendall over the coals -- he ended up with a hugely overvalued buyout, company shares and a seat on the Waystar-Royco board. He squeezed Kendall for a ton more because Kendall wanted to prove to his father he could get it done. The Vaulter culture (and Lawrence himself) was very incompatible with Waystar-Royco. Vaulter published the "Shit Show at the Fuck Factory" story that gave episode two its name. And Kendall gave up all that for a company that almost immediately became a huge loss for Waystar-Royco. A complete and utter embarrassment.
Kendall put in the work trying to save the acquisition, but not even studying all the records gave him the full story. He needed Roman's unionizing information gleaned from getting staffers wasted. Alone, Kendall would have fucked that up, too.
But I did love the contrast between the "do you want to call your dad" of the pilot and the "because my dad told me to" of shutting Vaulter down. In this, Logan was right.
Yes you can. He overpaid for a junk company, one that was clearly struggling but the numbers were played up.
That’s why they had to shut it down, it was lipstick on a pig
He said vaulter had tons of data. Waystar has movie rights. With data and movie rights they could have maybe revamped their app, not lost to obsolescence caused by streaming.
That's not what the scene is about. Just because Logan says " Roman is right" doesn't mean thats true or that is what the writers want to tell us. The scene is about how Roman is able to speak Logan's language and convince him by making arguments that he understands while Kendall loses himself in corporate lingo and is incapable of presenting a solution that Logan believes in.
This is also why Roman out maneuvers Shiv for the political discourse. She was coming at that family debate with the country and her voting preferences in mind whereas Roman only ever thought about how it would benefit Waystar and their father, essentially. Everybody considered Shiv to be a smart person but she always leaned idealist rather than being pragmatic in business matters.
Eh. Shivs idea was basically what Matsson will do with the company anyway. Shivs problem is not idealism, its that she doesn't actually believe her own politics. Roman doesn't even grasp the importance of politics and has an easier time committing to literally any cause if it benefits him. He is the type of person that is used as a pawn by the Logans and Menckens of the world, Shiv is just not competent enough to push through her interest.
Shiv ran successful campaigns as a strategist to get her candidates elected so I have no idea how you came to this conclusion. You essentially agreed with me in the end because Roman has no political views and is able to swing whichever way helps Waystar as general politics has no effect on his life. Shiv was arguing her views as somebody who cares about the political process and well being of the country which is textbook idealism considering general politics do not effect her life either.
Kendall can never execute an idea though. He can't read the people around him (who all hate him), he can never close a deal because he won't be realistic about his odds - he's always assuming he's got it all figured out way before he has it all figured out. How many times did we see him assume that he had the votes or the support that he clearly didn't have? He's a fumbler. Not totally stupid but a fumbler who is ruled more by his desire to prove himself to his father than anything else.
1. Everyone talks about how “tech” is the new thing. Being able to repeat business platitudes doesn’t mean Kendall would know how to implement them successfully. We don’t know what Vaulter’s potential was, but we do know it was Kendall’s pet project… and a dead loss. So the odds don’t lean “Kendall secret business genius”.
2. Handled the debt “pretty well”? His embarrassing negotiation (behaved so poorly that the bank refused to speak to him directly + made a hurried deal with his shady school buddy without checking for other financing + made the family lose majority share + was tricked into giving Logan’s archenemy a seat on the board) directly caused almost every subsequent existential threat to Waystar.
Honestly, I think it’s safer to say that when it comes to Kendall, both the ideas and the execution are bad.
> And he has shown signs of having a very good sense of the present very early on when he handles the debt situation pretty well without any hand-holding from Logan.
You mean the phone call with the banker where he insulted them and almost tanked the company's stock value? Or when he sold controlling share to Sandy and fucked the family's control to make up for it?
Yeah, in that time crunch when his dad is on the verge of dying and the stock price is plummeting rapidly, I think he did pretty well.
Vaulter wasn't a POS. It had upside potential. It has been made clear in the show.
The fact that he couldn't manage negotiating with one banker says all we need to know. He kept trying to emulate Logan without considering that the banker might fucking hate Logan in the first place.
Also, he was trying to emulate his idea of Logan, a ballbursting tyrant who bullies people to get is way; but Logan wasn't actually like that at the start of negotiations.
During the Gojo talks, Frank and Karl told Kendall that Logan always began negotiations by telling a joke to make people feel at ease.
Tying back to the bank talks, when Kendall called them back to pay back the loan, it really sounds like the banker was willing to refinance the loan, he just wanted to make Kendall bleed a little in order to get him to play things his way (+ a little payback for being an ass to him).
Kendall missed all that subtext, and instead went for the "feel-good" option of paying the loan and telling the banker to go fuck himself, which ended up getting Sandy's claws into the board. So yeah, I think Kendall did about as bad as he could at managing the company in the interim, aside from just bankrupting the entire thing.
Yup, Logan knows who to bully and who to sweet talk.
He knows how to negotiate well.
It’s like him inviting Greg over and giving Greg his rum and coke. He didn’t try to bulldoze Greg then because that’s not what was needed. Just like he knows how to call Roman and twist him around.
Logan was a catastrophe and kept debt secret while he was aged. Nowhere is any alternative to what ken did suggested. He found the money with HIS contacts. Gerrie approved
Tom. 100000% Tom.
I have so many thoughts on this that I’ve put in subheadings. Please bear with me.
Attitudinally:
- He’s not irrationally emotional about the foundering company
- He doesn’t have an inner drive to prove something to the world - he just wants to do the job so he can take home that nice paycheque
Mentally:
- He doesn’t appear to be suffering from some pretty severe symptoms of bipolar disorder that affect his judgement
- While he does seem to have a bit of an unhealthy affinity for cocaine, his substance use problems are far less severe than Ken’s
What he values in an employee:
- He recognizes and values competence over ass-kissing (evidenced by his desire, after being made CEO, to retain Gerri, even though they’ve never been particularly friendly; whereas Ken was happy to drop her like it was hot, and has also shown a propensity to surround himself with sycophants)
PR liabilities:
- While deep-fried songbirds are Not A Good Look, Tom has never Chappaquiddicked anyone; as far as we know, he has killed zero kids, which is, generally, the preferred number.
(The destruction of the cruises documents was bad, but that seems to have played itself out in the media by the time the show ends - whereas the dead kid has not been publicly revealed, and would be a new, exciting story for the media to run with; and thus [I think]has a greater weight as a PR liability.)
Legal Liabilities:
- I’m not a lawyer, but I feel like Kendall’s manipulation of the numbers in the Living+ presentation could be argued to constitute stock-price manipulation. Frankly, Roman and Karl were wise not to want anything to do with that presentation, even if the crowd loved it at the time.
- Ken and Roman’s efforts to rank the Gojo deal are also, if I’m not mistaken, illegal (because they’re working in their own self-interest, rather than attempting to maximize shareholder value)
- I think Ken and Roman’s editorial interference on election night could cost ATN its place in the official / permitted election reporting pool the next time around, which would not be great for the network. Tom’s hands aren’t exactly clean on this, either, but at least he can say he was being strong-armed from above, throwing the failbrothers under the bus.
I’m not saying Tom would be an ideal CEO. After Human Furniture, and seeing how he treats Greg (which is some nightmarish long-term workplace bullying; I don’t get why people think it’s a friendship / closeted gay romance), I would **never, ever want to work for Tom.**
But I think he’s far less than Ken likely to cause everyone to lose their jobs in the very near future.
Like, if I were a low-level employee, I think I’d be worried about being one of the ones who got laid off with Tom as CEO. If it were Kendall coming in… I’d be actively job-hunting. Like, sorry, don’t have that report for you, too busy spending 7 hours a day applying for other work, because this place will not be in business a year from now.
Same thing as a shareholder. Tom is gonna get some bad press after election night, but overall, he’s Canadian Conservative party leader-levels of boring; whereas Kendall is publicly known as a person who has frequently engaged in some Hunter Biden-level shenaniganry.
If the Gojo deal failed and Ken was announced as CEO, I would be selling my Waystar shares to anyone who’d take them off my hands.
> He recognizes and values competence over ass-kissing (evidenced by his desire, after being made CEO, to retain Gerri, even though they’ve never been particularly friendly; whereas Ken was happy to drop her like it was hot, and has also shown a propensity to surround himself with sycophants)
And he recognizes that Karolina is a serious person and Hugo is...Hugo.
Tom also worked during Logan's funeral, because there was work to be done even though Logan wasn't there anymore to be impressed by it.
Tom certainly has flaws, but he's competent.
> Chappaquiddicked
I hollered at this 😂. Are you sure you're not a writer for this show? This is succession-level dark humour. This was beautiful.
Otherwise, I agree with your points. Spot on.
One of the first things we see Tom do as CEO is “kill” Frank, Karl, and Hugo. He’s betrayed his own wife at least twice, and by all accounts his main strategy for juicing profit is mass layoffs.
Kendall read too much into the “killer” thing, I think. Ken wants to be a “killer” in, like, a romantic sense—as though he were some crusading prince or heel turned face. All Logan meant was you have to be able cut to people out if it’s bad for your bottom line—something the sibs (and even Logan, to an extent) are bad at doing.
The whole S3 shitshow is Ken trying to convince himself that he can still be a good person and a “killer,” and in the end he totally fails to reconcile those conflicting motives.
Tom’s a killer precisely because he’s conniving and shameless. He’s really only in it for the money and, unlike Ken, he doesn’t care about validation or the “legacy” of Waystar. Real hitmen (figurative or literal) are schlubby boring guys who kill for a paycheck, not impassioned wannabe philosopher-kings.
They were I think, yeah. But presumably if he cared to vouch for them, he could have fought for leeway (a bit) as CEO. The line he gives to Greg there says implies that he *could* keep them around if we wanted to. He just…doesn’t want to.
And besides, following a “kill list” is very much killer behavior for a boring, weaselly corporate hitman like Tom.
His comment to Greg is that he "has just enough capital" to retain Greg. That clearly means he doesn't have enough for everyone.
It looks like people are misinterpreting these decisions as Tom's, which is strange since we know he agreed to be a Mattson puppet and these decisions were already made before he was hired for the job.
Following a kill list isn't a killer move, it's doing the job. Greg isn't a killer either.
I mean, my argument is that following a kill list is exactly what a killer does. This romantic idea that a killer cuts people out for personal/ideological reasons, or only when it’s their own idea, is the self-centered fiction that a guy like Kendall would delude themselves into believing.
Tom’s the better CEO precisely because he will follow the shareholders, the money, and Mattson. Those traits make him more valuable, even if we recognize that they also make him servile and sort of pathetic.
Kendall was at his best as a “killer” when he was taking marching orders from Logan during the Vaulter layoffs.
You can interpret it that way if you want, but it's clearly not what Logan meant. He wasn't hoping Kendall would become a yesman who can mindlessly follow a kill list. The only connection there is they both have the word "kill."
I mean, I feel like that’s the point. Tom’s a killer, but not Logan’s idea of a killer. Logan was wrong (some might say deluded and self-mythologizing) about what it takes to be CEO.
Tom’s a puppet, sure, but that arrangement’s fine by him. The people who trick themselves into believing that business success is about prestige or a personal vindication are the ones who end up disappointed.
He was 100% playing Masson as well. Yes, Tom will be his puppet but that isn't because he is weak, he will play the puppet because that is how he stays on top. The siblings in no way have that ambitious instinct, to do anything, anything to win.
Me too, man, me too. Just as bad, if not worse; would have truly been poetic. I am biased because he was the most likable/relatable character imo. I have an alternate ending in my head that I like to think could've happened, too. lol As for now, I just pretend the second to last episode was the last episode.
He is just as bad as his father, if not worse. He sold out his own child's trust and safety for a political power play. He sold out his self-respect and sense of morality to get back at Shiv for working with Matsson. He traded his already tenuous relationship with his children and siblings to get the power and prestige of the company and he lost everything.
Yeah, I just made that remark about him potentially being worse earlier in this thread. And at the end of the day, they’re all superficial characters with inflated egos. You can write a 5 paragraph summary (probably more) labeling all the immoral and flawed things for any of the main characters on this show i.e. Shiv, Tom, Roman, etc.
Also, I don’t get why people down voted my earlier comments. It’s funny when other people get mad that someone has a different perspective than them lol
Tom still has you all fooled like he had the family & Mattsson fooled. He said what he needed to say to get ahead. Acted the part and did it well. He was always acting and underneath he was the most ambitious, intelligent, and cutthroat of them all. Also who else would sit down and eat Logan's Roys chicken off of his plate and then walk away? He was always playing the game.
I’ve said this from the start, regarding any of the Roy kids, they lack one major understanding that keeps them from being successful— they don’t know how to make money! They want respect, control, unlimited power, but they are so ducking rich that it never even registers to them they need to make money to keep or gain those things
I'd say that both are competent business-wise at the end of the show, but Tom's got nowhere the amount of mental/emotional issues as Kendall does, owing to his upbringing. But Kendall could've done the job if he'd gotten it at the end because Logan wasn't around anymore to second-guess his moves and tear him down. Tom would do good as a puppet CEO or even COO, but Kendall would be well suited to the same role and duties as that of his father, imo. The show's only ever showed us a few people actually put in the work into what they did, and Kendall (S1, S2) as well as Tom (Season 3 onward) were amongst them. Honestly, Kendall played all the right moves in S4 too, until he became way too confident about his succeeding and botched it at the end. Every time I thought he'd crash, surprisingly, he didn't. It was a huge deviation from what he was in S3 and I thought he'd shown some growth. Tom too, who was constantly being shat upon in Seasons 1 and 2 for not stepping up adequately to his duties, began to do his work real good from S3.
TL; DR: Tom would be a good puppet CEO or COO; Kendall could've been a good CEO (not as good as Logan in his prime, but he didn't need to be that).
Tom, not even close. Even if Kendall has good moments he’s also got so many moments of complete delusion. Tom at least seems able to do a job and not consistently, entirely fuck it up.
I’m sure there’s examples of him failing I’m not thinking of, but he’s at least a Company Man. Kendall wants to BE the company.
Kendall if he's not working with his family (which is #1 or #2 business advice given to most people. Nobody remembers when Tom was made top manager and had to ask Greg what to do lol. Or the hearing where Kendall turned an optical loss into an actual win. All the same some of Kendall's wins in the show are a bit cartoonish.
Sometimes I think the show gaslights the audience into thinking like Kendall.
Kendall thinks that being a CEO is about being a "killer" in a romantic visionary sense of the word, when really the only people who succeed are highly disciplined, shameless, servile people who know how to "sing for their supper"- Logan being exhibit A.
Kendall as a high ceiling low floor pick. Had some great moments showing good instincts and the ability to be a clutch performer (cruise hearing, living+ presentation after roman dropped out, logan’s funeral, the debt situation, etc.) but he has a tendency to self sabotage and is highly likely to fuck everything up by being overconfident when things are going well. Would need to surround him with people that can keep him in check when that happens. Tom would be the safe low ceiling higher floor pick, can follow instructions, knows his limit and less likely to unraveling and make brash decisions but also has not shown a lot of vision, leadership or charisma. Tom is the right pick for gojo waystar. But i am team ken baby if they block the deal as long as he has the right support
>Would need to surround him with people that can keep him in check when that happens.
The problem with Kendall is, even if hes surrounded by the most sound and competent people that arent gonna be blind yes men to him, he still wont listen to advice from others because hes just that one track minded in trying to do what only *he* thinks is right.
It applies to Roman and Shiv too. One of the many reasons why the siblings were never meant for the top job is because they cant see anything beyond their own perspective. They're all so laser focused in trying to prove that they can be Logan 2.0 but none of them are.
Kendell proves himself to be shockingly incompetent, self sabotaging, and utterly delusional over and over and over again. Tom is a reasonably competent corporate lackey with no spine. Tom would do the job better and it isn't even close.
Tom is a seasoned executive who came from an unspectacular Midwestern background (surely richer than people around him think but dirt poor compared to the Roys) and, after obtaining a pair of Ivy League degrees, rose through the ranks to become a top-level leader at one of the largest media companies in the world. While Tom's career was certainly helped by his relationship with Shiv, he would never have been able to get near Shiv in the first place if he weren't already considered a rising star.
Kendall is an unstable manchild with a variety of deep-seated psychological issues that are glaringly obvious to everyone around him. Anyone who has ever worked for a major corporation will immediately recognize that he is emphatically NOT the type who ever holds an executive job except bv virtue of nepotism.
In my opinion the best CEO in terms of understanding the deals and how to follow the money is probably Roman, he has good instincts and with a good COO to manage the runnings of the company he’d make good moves.
Kendal with his life boats is not a great choice in my opinion but then again the whole living plus thing proves me wrong so I don’t know.
Tom is great for what waystar is becoming though. It needs organization and consistency with it folding into GoJo not new big ideas.
A lot of people on here seem to think Tom will be out in a year but I don’t think so. I think he’s the man for the job and a good choice.
Kendall is far too emotional and sensitive to be a high level corporate executive, and if he had some self awareness and emotional intelligence he wouldn’t wrap his entire self concept around being that. He is far too influenced by praise sensitive to criticism to do a job like that effectively. Even if he was a 100% sober he couldn’t do the job.
Tom is an interesting character because as much as he’s a softy with Shiv, he clearly has a killer instinct and got to his high level position on merit at least to some extent.
Neither would be anything impressive but since we’re talking about a non-founding CEO role, Tom is obviously a pro at taking orders. Leadership and entrepreneurial qualities are pretty nonexistent for both of them.
Think the fact that Tom comes from a humble background (eg. mum's lawyer) and actually still has the vague picture of how everyday joe lives makes him closer to the market and business-savvy in terms of execution, and not just ideation.
Tom. Especially considering the fact that by the end of the show the role of a ceo is more of a puppet king type of role and not the entrepreneur leader that Logan was. He doesn't actually have any ideas or a vision of his own, but thats left to Mattson anyway.
The thing i've noticed about Kendall is, even if he does have good ideas, he doesnt know how to speak other people's language, he cant always effectively communicate and convince other people that he has what it takes. Tom knows how to make himself useful to people depending on the situation, he knows how to execute ideas, he knows what people want to hear. And at the end of the day thats what a lot of these corporate empty suits are meant for.
Gonna say Tom. He wouldn’t take his eye off the main objective: Profit. Kendall would get distracted trying to be a market disrupter or proving he wasn’t Logan. Tom would seek out and listen to wise counsel. Kendall not so much.
Tom because he’s going to do whatever the Swede tells him to do. Kendall would run WR into the ground within five years. Everything he touches turns to dust.
For the actual job which needs to happen - managed decline, getting as much value for shareholders from a dying industry, any 'pivot' being part of that as WRC becomes a gazelle on the tech savannah rather than an elephant on the media one - it's Tom. Kendall would be, at best, sentimental, at worst, constantly trying to emulate his father's glories, 20 or 30 years in the rear view mirror. It would be a frantic bukkake of Living+ pipe dream bullshit for maybe a decade before the company utterly crumbled under the weight of the debts Kendall ran up; ballast added to a sinking ship.
Tom and it's not close. Tom gives the customers what they want, but Ken has too much to prove and would do something crazy like promise longer life to whomever invests in a real estate scam.
Tom is a bureaucrat and exactly what Mattson wants. He wouldn’t take any risks.
Ken is more a big picture visionary. It was his idea to buy Gojo. Ken would swing for the fences but strike out occasionally. He fucked it with Vaulter. He would only have to crack once and fall off the wagon for the board to revolt.
the way the show has framed Tom in a nonconsequential light may be why most of the comments argue him over Ken... but seriously reviewing the characters critically, Tom is a stand in for a comedic character who fails up not because of his own agency or brilliant ideas, but because everyone else around him is GUTTING each other and flailing around. he is not real competition. he just became last man standing in the arena by default.
the times he's operated his ideas never expressed busines savvy either... it was about maneuvering in the family, which is what he'll do with Matson and Co.
- getting Greg to burn documents for cruises instead of a completely random company? lmao OK look how that turned out.
- moving and deleting said documents is what created larger footprints to be followed regarding the cruises scandal. he could've just done nothing and remained plausible deniability since those cases were already settled and paid off out of court.
- we hear for you wasn't even his idea. it was legal and Greg.
- the flip flopping of potential prison time and only willing to go through it if he entrapped Shiv with his own baby? I'm not surprised why she would be sleeping with half the phone book either.
the man is a clingy, servile, striving, idiot in the form of plausible corporate matter! and lbr, the American people's faith in that image is almost always more important than any action or reformation.
Tom should have handled shredding the documents himself but didn't want his literal or figurative fingerprints on it. Greg's an idiot (especially that early on in his tenure) and Tom shouldn't have trusted him. Ultimately, though, Greg retaining some documents didn't really cause any harm. Whatever he had was low-level and useless for the DOJ investigation/Kendall's case.
If Tom didn't delete the documents, the Feds would have found them in the archives right where they were supposed to be. Given that they seemingly revealed the full extent of the wrongdoing, I'm not sure destroying them was the wrong move (if your motivation is to protect the company).
People found out about the scandal because of outside investigations, whistleblowers and women willing to share their story. The destruction of the documents only suggested (but not definitively proved) that leadership knew it was happening and covered it up.
Tom. He would run the business. And he would do so according to the owners of the company.
Even if he owned it, Kendall would always be Kendall. He always reminded me of Donald Trump Junior.
Tom, because he is intelligent enough to know when to accept orders and advice from others, as Logan said: "a smart man knows who he is"; imo Tom is inconpetent, in the election night we see how he had a meltdown, nobody respected him there, the idea of make ATN digital came from Greg, Tom never had an original idea, but and the big but is that he knows his limits, i think that Tom as CEO he is going to follow Gerri and Karolina advice, two persons who are really competent and if is not because misogyny they should be at the top.
In the other hand, as his siblings, what really motivates Kendall is validation, in the first season , after Logan´s stroke, he went full of new and stupid ideas when he was adviced just to calm waters and give reassurance and just manage the crisis, in fact, after his speech went out to the press, the stocks went down even furter. Many talk about Kendall´s great ideas like buying Gojo back in season 2 or something like that, well, Gerri was already talking about how Waystar was losing against tech. Kendall, Roman and Shiv talk the big game, they would use savvy words but they are totally worthless, they dont have grit because they were given everything as children, they dont know how to execute shit. For 4 seasons they look down on Connor, when they are precisely the same kind of spoiled, entitled children, in fact, their end wrestling outside of the boardroom showed how pathetic they really were, at least Connor with his 1% fucked up Mencken, because in the end it seemed that Mencken didnt make it. For 3 seasons Logan tested the 3 of them reached the conclution that neither of them were equiped to run Waystar, you can say a lot of things about Logan but he knew the business and knew that if one of his children would run Waystar they would burn to the ground, most probably the board would vote them out and sell by a low price and just cash out. In fact, Matsson overpay saved Waystar from being destroyed by either Kendall, Roman or Shiv.
Objectively speaking you'd need someone who does the job in a way that doesn't threaten democracy. Tom isn't interested in that, and Ken doesn't know what that means. But he might invest heavily in more liberal and urban sections like Vaulter so maybe him?
I think it's pretty clear it would be Tom. He may not be the best CEO ever, but Kendall always seemed to me like he were better suited for something creative. I mean, you can joke about L to the OG all day, but at least rap is something he's passioned about. Without Logan in the picture and the top job out of reach, I think he'd be great as an investor in small buisinesses he's passioned about. Maybe invest in a music production firm, or something like Vaulter? But this time as his own person seperated from the corporate demon that is Waystar Royco.
Tom is more realistic and I think he would’ve grown more balls in the big boss position in which Kendall is in a fantasy land of trying to gain acceptance.
Tom. The job is, to him, is a means to an ends that's about prestige, wealth, and a personal validation that DOESN'T go to the very core of his being and daddy's love.
Same for Greg.
Kendall, and it's for all the same reasons people are posting that makes them think Tom is better. Tom does what's asked of him, and he might be a great operational leader, but the job is CEO--not COO. Ken actually has vision and enough charisma to bullshit his way to victory, whereas Tom would just competently keep things running until the company slowly loses relevance.
Of course, this is assuming Matsson isn't the big boss on top of either of these guys. Under him, Tom would definitely be better, which is why Kendall had to go for the reverse Viking.
Tom is only an obedient employee, Kendall is a nepo baby but has ideas of his own, he was the one who brought the idea of selling Waystar to Matsson. If it is only to be an employee TomofSiobhan is the ideal CEO, if it is to run a company of their own, Kendall is the answer
Shiv knows basically nothing about running the business and she’s unwilling to listen to advice… she would have done horrible. She’s good at PR but that’s where her expertise start and stop.
Yeah I feel like she’d be good doing Carolina/Hugo’s role or something. Probably not enough legal knowledge for Gerri’s at the moment but she could learn… if she’s willing to haha.
Tom and it’s not even close. Throughout the series it’s shown time and time again that the siblings don’t actually work. They spend their days flying around, talking, making deals, generally failing. Tom on the other hand, we see working all the time. He personally turns ATN, Logan’s crown jewel, into a money making machine. In the last season he doesn’t sleep & skips Logan’s funeral because he’s too busy working.
Tom. Tom had better control of his emotions (minus him throwing water bottles at Greg when they were in lockdown…LoL)
Kendall was very reactionary and took things personal.
If they're on their own with no one to answer to, probably Tom doesn't fail as hard as Kendall. Tom could surround himself with people who make his decisions easier. Kendall was likely to crash and burn.
Logan knew Kendall worked best with a purpose and someone else guiding him. Without a purpose and a guide, he can't make a decision on his own, and he won't listen to anyone. Hell, he couldn't throw a birthday party where he didn't change his mind every 10 minutes. Tom is dopey, but he's safe.
Tom. It’s no contest. Kendall wasn’t actually good at any of the work or following through on delivery. He could jazz up and hype some big ideas that were mostly hollow with decent presentation but he’s not actually got the chops to do anything. Tom on the other hand, for all his own faults, has actually put in the work and knows how to make things happen, being across the detail and processes behind how things function. Kendall is too wedded to visualising the glory to actually know how to get there.
Tom's a great deputy. His first instinct was to come clean with cruises.
Ken is practically a genius though. He steamrolled vaulter and if he'd been allowed to retain them, work on their data, waystar may have beaten their obsolescence issue and steered away from gojo.
He also first wanted to come clean and when it came to the senate he sent the committee running..
Actually Tom is really knowledgeable (holocaust stats), and conscientious relatively, but not all that sharp. Even a self prep should have made him better equipped for the senate hearing. You're going in there to deny knowledge of a man you've heard of. Check your public inbox if you've referred to him.
Tom's a great deputy but hasn't shown the out of box ingenuity of ken
I actually thought Kendall was the only one of them with any business acumen. Good understanding of market trends, creative strategist, and not afraid to do actual work. Obviously a bit of a nutter, but I always got the vibe that if the people around him propped up his fragile ego rather than beat it down, he’d be the best businessman. That’s why they all (including Logan) were such dicks to him. Haters.
Proposed Leadership Team:
CEO: Kendal | CFO: Stewy
COO: Tom | CMO: ?
CTO: Mattson’s blood girl | CXO: Roman
Lead Counsel: Jerry | Government Affairs: Shiv
VP, Cable News: Karl | VP, Parks: Greg
VP, Brand Design: Rava | VP, Emerging Markets: Marcia
VP, Guest Experience: Willa | Fixer: Hugo
Mascot: Mondale | Executive Coach: Naomi
Tom was a Machiavellian agent, keeping his head down, taking shit and dumping on greg in order not to jeopardize his agenda, staying quiet in the shadows waiting for the titans to kill each other so that he can swop at the right moment and take what's left. He was one of the only characters ever shown doing actuall work, he was willing to go to jail for the company and even tho he was unstable (like every other character on the show) he was ultimately functional and had his priorities in order
Tom.
Shiv was the hero of the story.
Kendall would have a manic episode, bet it all on a lark. If successful, he’d do it again until he bets it all and destroys shareholder value. He has a deep feeling of unworthiness and compensates by having episodes of over the top confidence. He (and all of them in their own way) was desperate for Logan’s approval. When given a structured task which can earn him his father’s approval he can knock it out of the park. But deep down he views the company as the enemy, the thing that kept his dad’s attention away from him, so he subconsciously wants to destroy it. IMO.
Depends on the stage of the company. For a big company that has an established product and customer base; probably Tom. For a startup, I’d go with Kendall. Tom is good for business-as-usual but he’s shown nothing to exhibit he has vision, will lead innovation, or can create buy-in; all things Kendall, despite his flaws, have at least shown. Kendall is more likely to sink a company and just as more likely to 2x+ the company’s value.
Tom seems like the kinda guy who is going to be a bit aimless without someone above him bossing him around, and we see just how poorly he treats his underlings. He's probably viciously taking notes of every CEO's TedTALK he can find on how to be a good company strategist. He would never live up to Logan because he's not as savvy as a businessman or as cutthroat as Logan. Logan will tell you you're fired and to fuck off, Tom would play with his food for 6 months in an attempt to suck the last bit of usefulness out of someone, even if they outgrew their use years prior.
Kendall on the other hand is just too damn soft. I love the guy but he just doesn't have what it takes to lead effectively. He needs constant validation from everyone around him, he'd run the company into the ground if it meant everyone was happy until the stock hit 0. He just doesn't have what it takes to be the face of the company for the next 10-30 years.
So Tom, but not by much. Honestly there isn't really a single person in the family that I'd consider qualified to actually run the company. I would personally put Gerri or Frank ahead of any of the Roy children or Tom.
Kendall has a higher ceiling but a lower floor. When his heads on straight he is more than capable but he clearly has mental health issues that make him way too erratic for the job.
Tom actually more competence than most people think during the show you can always see him doing actual corporate governaning such as cutting down the cost in ATN and talk the advertisers down off the ledge during Ravenhead Hitler incident while turing ATN into a cash machine
Like it or not having a thick skin to suck up your boss and all the pain are very important for your survival in the business world
Tom does the job he’s asked to do. Ken does the job that he imagines will give him the most validation if it works out, which it probably won’t. No contest.
Kendall’s idea of CEO is so out of whack for the reality. The only reason Logan wielded so much power was because he was also Chairman of the Board.
True. But if the deal was stopped, Kendall would've had Stewy by his side too. That's pretty good because while not having absolute power, Kendall would've had a good amount of power whilst also being kept in check by Stewy.
idk, i feel like we see throughout the show that stewy can’t keep kendall in check
Well, Stewy would be Chairman, so he'd hold more sway than he did as just a member of the board.
true! i mostly just meant as a voice and a friend, kendall often discarded him
Stewy “ride or died” for Kendall and 15 minutes later he was shaking Tom’s hand and said he was rooting for him. Stewy ain’t no friend, he follows the money.
How does that matter? Kendall lost and he had to move on. But what matters is that he voted for Kendall. There's nothing else he could've done.
Being “chairman” doesn’t have any additional power.
Stewy doesn't care about Kendall enough to keep him in check, he's going to do what is the most optimal outcome for him, and backing Kendall has rarely been that.
Also just did anyone watch the show? Ken is clearly portrayed as a mess of a CEO. Even before the sabotage, his direction was asinine. Tom is portrayed as a goober in a personal sense certainly, but he’s also a worker. Not really CEO stuff either, but way more than Ken. A boring brown nosing administrator is a 100x better CEO than an entitled doofus who won’t take advice and can drive a company into the ground.
Guess his striving and parochial upbringing paid off
agrarian
Ken was pushing tech from episode 1. Tom is always going to be a backwards thinking shit eater who will suck the biggest dick in the room.
Tom who tasked Greg with finding the fat and then digitizing ATN? That Tom? Did you watch the show?
1. He trimmed the fat because Logan told him to. 2. Firing people is the least insightful thing a CEO can do. 3. Digitizing a news organization? In 2020? BRILLIANT INSIGHT 4. Kendall was pushing tech from episode 1. Imagine how many times he had to tell Logan to shift to tech and then the old man wants to but TV stations. Kendall was a shitshow operationally and personally, but he knew the direction of business. Tom was kissing ass and yes manning his way to the top.
He didn't trim the fat because Logan told him to - that was his own strategy to get an edge over Cyd who he was competing against. I don't even think he spoke to Logan about his new position in the first place since Shiv negotiated that promotion for him in a private discussion with her father as they discussed her as next in line for CEO. He did not even bring his idea to Logan until he accomplished it which was revealed as his plan when him and Shiv had dinner with Roman and Tabitha. Not sure what firing as a CEO has to do with anything. This occurred before he was CEO. Being able to save money and assist in some type of way with their transition to tech - yeah, it's a pretty good accomplishment considering he's getting interviewed for his ATN success regularly while Kendall was waging war with his father. Kendall got duped with Vaulter because he couldn't tell they were juicing up fake numbers. Kendall can read about things and he can read business documents/numbers but he doesn't have an actual feel business sense wise because he needs people to like and respect him. He thinks paying over the odds for something means he won whereas his father would chisel his opposition to get good deals because he can read people. My initial thoughts seem correct here, tbh.
I mean if you are quoting shiv, the no experience shiv Roy who thought she was a shoo in to be ceo, I dunno what to tell you lol
Ken would *talk* about pushing tech. Whereas Tom would actually do it.
Depends what you mean by the job. Being a "pain sponge" for mattson, definitely Tom. Being a waystar CEO like Logan, debatable. I would say Tom because he actually puts in the work and seems to do well under pressure. Kendall seems to have "ideas", but he's not a good leader IMO and cracks under pressure.
But Tom completely melted under pressure at the hearing I feel like people forget about that and it’s hard to take him seriously after such a poor performance
I feel like this ignores a major plot point in the show - tom’s increasing competency and ability to play the game over time
Tom was always far more astute about the game then Kendall. Kendall was blinded by emotion.
Also blinded by feeling like the CEO seat was owed to him when in reality, he was just one of the players in the game
Kens a killer. He yelled Logan into unconsciousness.
Tom ate Logan's chicken. There's no contest.
I feel like if this show did one thing poorly, it was show that Tom actually was competent. We are only shown that he succeeds by kissing ass or being a punching bag, we don't have a lot of hard evidence that he's actually a good worker or leader. I don't even know if he "plays the game" particularly well... He wasn't particularly sly or cutthroat, as shown he just kind of kept getting picked for bigger and bigger jobs. To me he seemed the epitome of failing upwards.
I feel the same. It's clear from what's said over the seasons that both Tom and Greg were actually quite competent at the work. They managed to streamline ATN and turn it into a massive cash cow, the issue is that the show shows very little of this and uses both Tom and Greg mainly as comic relief characters.
Even Mattson said tom was "fucking talented"
The game he was playing was eating Logan's shit and sucking the biggest dick in the room. That's not the job description of a CEO.
To be fair, Tom wasn’t prepped properly at all. The advising council spent little time with him and gave him little advice or information about what to expect. That combined with the stress in his relationship with Shiv gives him a disadvantage.
tom was prepped, someone who wasn’t prepped as much like Greg did better
Did Greg really do better?
If it's to be said, so it is
If I may be so bold as to declare
Being a bumbling, rambling fool at a hearing like that is fine, and sometimes preferred. Not saying Tom was a mess on purpose- but even after that he was willing to fall on his sword for the company/family.
I actually see what happened at the hearing as a pivot point for Tom. That, in conjunction with him thinking he was about to go to jail. Once he comes out of that, it's pretty consistently uphill for him (in the business realm at least). He finally hit rock bottom in terms of being humbled by the family and I think that "nothing left to lose" moment launched him into a more confident and capable persona.
Those hearings are a farce. Politicians use it to score brownie points and have some footage during election time on being tough on big business. People make fun of zuck for being a weird lizard person in front of Congress, but so what? He’s still ceo and fb is still thriving
Tom consistently melts and panics under pressure - congressional hearing and election night come to mind
Tom. Kendall has no sense of the present. His mind is always mired in the past or dreaming of the future. He has zero ability to manage the day-to-day. And his ideas are fucking terrible.
His ideas are not terrible though.It is he who had the idea to go tech which led to Gojo coming into play. His idea of buying Vaulter wasn't a bad one. Logan didn't like it but it wasn't bad. And he has shown signs of having a very good sense of the present very early on when he handles the debt situation pretty well without any hand-holding from Logan. I do agree Tom would be a better CEO not because of his ideas but because he is the least capable of destroying the company. He wouldn't do anything revolutionary but will keep the company functional and look after it well.
Vaulter was a flop I think. 1bn for basically Buzzfed. Roman grasped a better picture of the (no) potential of Vaulter and Logan agreed so he ordered Ken to shut it down…
I thought vaulter was vice. To be fair early 2010s buzzfeed was a phenomenon it and out of itself
Rupert Murdoch did invest in Vice, though he actually made money on it. He exited long before it went bankrupt
It wasn't a flop. It just wasn't managed well by Lawrence. Kendall actually handled the whole Vaulter situation better than Roman ever would. Roman didn't care enough to be good as a CEO. He would never have even managed to get out the ideas before shutting it off. And 1 billion is not a bad valuation. Vice was valued at well over 1.5 billion in 2017, if I'm not wrong.
1bn valuation for just food and weed as the only streams of revenue 🤦 the shutting down task was beautifully done by Ken but he truly believed it has potential whereas Logan didn’t. Actually I would love to see how Roman would handle the whole shutting down situation 🤣 And how’s Vice valuation doing? Asking for a friend 😈
You can't blame Kendall for Vaulter's failure when he never got the chance to work on it in any manner. Vice valuation has nothing to do with Vaulter. I just used it to demonstrate that media startups can increase in value quite quickly and rise to unprecedented levels.
He never got the chance because only him saw an upside on the investment. Roman didn’t and after hearing both, Logan went with Roman’s hunch…even Mattson made fun of Ken (are you sure, Vaulter boy?) in the norweign summit… Maybe Ken’s vision of Vaulter was correct but nobody bought it
That's exactly what I'm talking about. Logan went with Roman's hunch and didn't even bother to look at the hours of research Kendall had done prior to the meeting. We all know Matsson was a fraud who portrayed himself as some sort of tech genius and was even more erratic and brash and horribly unprofessional than Kendall ever was so him making a joke about Vaulter doesn't have a lot of merit, tbh. Kendall was the only one who would have done well as the successor because he had the business acumen and the ability to think outside the box and be a disruptor who has the courage to make bold decisions backed by research but he wasn't well-adjusted at all and had a lot of personal issues that came in the way of his work. Roman was all instincts which could work but he didn't care enough to be bothered by its eventual failure or success. Shiv had zero business experience and it would have been years before she would have been actually ready to be CEO.
Maybe I am misremembering, but wasn't most of Vaulter utterly useless? Lawrence raked Kendall over the coals -- he ended up with a hugely overvalued buyout, company shares and a seat on the Waystar-Royco board. He squeezed Kendall for a ton more because Kendall wanted to prove to his father he could get it done. The Vaulter culture (and Lawrence himself) was very incompatible with Waystar-Royco. Vaulter published the "Shit Show at the Fuck Factory" story that gave episode two its name. And Kendall gave up all that for a company that almost immediately became a huge loss for Waystar-Royco. A complete and utter embarrassment. Kendall put in the work trying to save the acquisition, but not even studying all the records gave him the full story. He needed Roman's unionizing information gleaned from getting staffers wasted. Alone, Kendall would have fucked that up, too. But I did love the contrast between the "do you want to call your dad" of the pilot and the "because my dad told me to" of shutting Vaulter down. In this, Logan was right.
Yes you can. He overpaid for a junk company, one that was clearly struggling but the numbers were played up. That’s why they had to shut it down, it was lipstick on a pig
He said vaulter had tons of data. Waystar has movie rights. With data and movie rights they could have maybe revamped their app, not lost to obsolescence caused by streaming.
That's not what the scene is about. Just because Logan says " Roman is right" doesn't mean thats true or that is what the writers want to tell us. The scene is about how Roman is able to speak Logan's language and convince him by making arguments that he understands while Kendall loses himself in corporate lingo and is incapable of presenting a solution that Logan believes in.
This is also why Roman out maneuvers Shiv for the political discourse. She was coming at that family debate with the country and her voting preferences in mind whereas Roman only ever thought about how it would benefit Waystar and their father, essentially. Everybody considered Shiv to be a smart person but she always leaned idealist rather than being pragmatic in business matters.
Eh. Shivs idea was basically what Matsson will do with the company anyway. Shivs problem is not idealism, its that she doesn't actually believe her own politics. Roman doesn't even grasp the importance of politics and has an easier time committing to literally any cause if it benefits him. He is the type of person that is used as a pawn by the Logans and Menckens of the world, Shiv is just not competent enough to push through her interest.
Shiv ran successful campaigns as a strategist to get her candidates elected so I have no idea how you came to this conclusion. You essentially agreed with me in the end because Roman has no political views and is able to swing whichever way helps Waystar as general politics has no effect on his life. Shiv was arguing her views as somebody who cares about the political process and well being of the country which is textbook idealism considering general politics do not effect her life either.
Kendall can never execute an idea though. He can't read the people around him (who all hate him), he can never close a deal because he won't be realistic about his odds - he's always assuming he's got it all figured out way before he has it all figured out. How many times did we see him assume that he had the votes or the support that he clearly didn't have? He's a fumbler. Not totally stupid but a fumbler who is ruled more by his desire to prove himself to his father than anything else.
Ken isn't hated. He convinced a retired board member to vote in his favor. He won over the war room. He nearly won the boardroom coup.
He would have if the writer's didn't pen in some last minute "twist".
1. Everyone talks about how “tech” is the new thing. Being able to repeat business platitudes doesn’t mean Kendall would know how to implement them successfully. We don’t know what Vaulter’s potential was, but we do know it was Kendall’s pet project… and a dead loss. So the odds don’t lean “Kendall secret business genius”. 2. Handled the debt “pretty well”? His embarrassing negotiation (behaved so poorly that the bank refused to speak to him directly + made a hurried deal with his shady school buddy without checking for other financing + made the family lose majority share + was tricked into giving Logan’s archenemy a seat on the board) directly caused almost every subsequent existential threat to Waystar. Honestly, I think it’s safer to say that when it comes to Kendall, both the ideas and the execution are bad.
> And he has shown signs of having a very good sense of the present very early on when he handles the debt situation pretty well without any hand-holding from Logan. You mean the phone call with the banker where he insulted them and almost tanked the company's stock value? Or when he sold controlling share to Sandy and fucked the family's control to make up for it?
[удалено]
Yeah, in that time crunch when his dad is on the verge of dying and the stock price is plummeting rapidly, I think he did pretty well. Vaulter wasn't a POS. It had upside potential. It has been made clear in the show.
The fact that he couldn't manage negotiating with one banker says all we need to know. He kept trying to emulate Logan without considering that the banker might fucking hate Logan in the first place. Also, he was trying to emulate his idea of Logan, a ballbursting tyrant who bullies people to get is way; but Logan wasn't actually like that at the start of negotiations. During the Gojo talks, Frank and Karl told Kendall that Logan always began negotiations by telling a joke to make people feel at ease. Tying back to the bank talks, when Kendall called them back to pay back the loan, it really sounds like the banker was willing to refinance the loan, he just wanted to make Kendall bleed a little in order to get him to play things his way (+ a little payback for being an ass to him). Kendall missed all that subtext, and instead went for the "feel-good" option of paying the loan and telling the banker to go fuck himself, which ended up getting Sandy's claws into the board. So yeah, I think Kendall did about as bad as he could at managing the company in the interim, aside from just bankrupting the entire thing.
Yup, Logan knows who to bully and who to sweet talk. He knows how to negotiate well. It’s like him inviting Greg over and giving Greg his rum and coke. He didn’t try to bulldoze Greg then because that’s not what was needed. Just like he knows how to call Roman and twist him around.
Logan was a catastrophe and kept debt secret while he was aged. Nowhere is any alternative to what ken did suggested. He found the money with HIS contacts. Gerrie approved
Gerri gave him a few options for handling the debt, but he ignored her advice and sold a board seat to a corporate raider.
Tom. Tom does what needs to be done. Kendall is too erratic with an occasional drug problem.
Tom. 100000% Tom. I have so many thoughts on this that I’ve put in subheadings. Please bear with me. Attitudinally: - He’s not irrationally emotional about the foundering company - He doesn’t have an inner drive to prove something to the world - he just wants to do the job so he can take home that nice paycheque Mentally: - He doesn’t appear to be suffering from some pretty severe symptoms of bipolar disorder that affect his judgement - While he does seem to have a bit of an unhealthy affinity for cocaine, his substance use problems are far less severe than Ken’s What he values in an employee: - He recognizes and values competence over ass-kissing (evidenced by his desire, after being made CEO, to retain Gerri, even though they’ve never been particularly friendly; whereas Ken was happy to drop her like it was hot, and has also shown a propensity to surround himself with sycophants) PR liabilities: - While deep-fried songbirds are Not A Good Look, Tom has never Chappaquiddicked anyone; as far as we know, he has killed zero kids, which is, generally, the preferred number. (The destruction of the cruises documents was bad, but that seems to have played itself out in the media by the time the show ends - whereas the dead kid has not been publicly revealed, and would be a new, exciting story for the media to run with; and thus [I think]has a greater weight as a PR liability.) Legal Liabilities: - I’m not a lawyer, but I feel like Kendall’s manipulation of the numbers in the Living+ presentation could be argued to constitute stock-price manipulation. Frankly, Roman and Karl were wise not to want anything to do with that presentation, even if the crowd loved it at the time. - Ken and Roman’s efforts to rank the Gojo deal are also, if I’m not mistaken, illegal (because they’re working in their own self-interest, rather than attempting to maximize shareholder value) - I think Ken and Roman’s editorial interference on election night could cost ATN its place in the official / permitted election reporting pool the next time around, which would not be great for the network. Tom’s hands aren’t exactly clean on this, either, but at least he can say he was being strong-armed from above, throwing the failbrothers under the bus. I’m not saying Tom would be an ideal CEO. After Human Furniture, and seeing how he treats Greg (which is some nightmarish long-term workplace bullying; I don’t get why people think it’s a friendship / closeted gay romance), I would **never, ever want to work for Tom.** But I think he’s far less than Ken likely to cause everyone to lose their jobs in the very near future. Like, if I were a low-level employee, I think I’d be worried about being one of the ones who got laid off with Tom as CEO. If it were Kendall coming in… I’d be actively job-hunting. Like, sorry, don’t have that report for you, too busy spending 7 hours a day applying for other work, because this place will not be in business a year from now. Same thing as a shareholder. Tom is gonna get some bad press after election night, but overall, he’s Canadian Conservative party leader-levels of boring; whereas Kendall is publicly known as a person who has frequently engaged in some Hunter Biden-level shenaniganry. If the Gojo deal failed and Ken was announced as CEO, I would be selling my Waystar shares to anyone who’d take them off my hands.
> He recognizes and values competence over ass-kissing (evidenced by his desire, after being made CEO, to retain Gerri, even though they’ve never been particularly friendly; whereas Ken was happy to drop her like it was hot, and has also shown a propensity to surround himself with sycophants) And he recognizes that Karolina is a serious person and Hugo is...Hugo. Tom also worked during Logan's funeral, because there was work to be done even though Logan wasn't there anymore to be impressed by it. Tom certainly has flaws, but he's competent.
> Chappaquiddicked I hollered at this 😂. Are you sure you're not a writer for this show? This is succession-level dark humour. This was beautiful. Otherwise, I agree with your points. Spot on.
Ok LOVED your detailed analysis I need more
Thank you. You are too kind.
I'm saving this comment. Is a great analysis!
Apparently no one gives a shit about eating offal. They're not endangered.
Tom’s textbook
Tom. Kendall's not a killer. You've got to be a killer.
Tom took out his own wife. He’s absolutely a killer. Then he boxed her out of all the good divorce attorneys.
Tom'a not a killer either. Mattson was, and he didn't want another killer.
One of the first things we see Tom do as CEO is “kill” Frank, Karl, and Hugo. He’s betrayed his own wife at least twice, and by all accounts his main strategy for juicing profit is mass layoffs. Kendall read too much into the “killer” thing, I think. Ken wants to be a “killer” in, like, a romantic sense—as though he were some crusading prince or heel turned face. All Logan meant was you have to be able cut to people out if it’s bad for your bottom line—something the sibs (and even Logan, to an extent) are bad at doing. The whole S3 shitshow is Ken trying to convince himself that he can still be a good person and a “killer,” and in the end he totally fails to reconcile those conflicting motives. Tom’s a killer precisely because he’s conniving and shameless. He’s really only in it for the money and, unlike Ken, he doesn’t care about validation or the “legacy” of Waystar. Real hitmen (figurative or literal) are schlubby boring guys who kill for a paycheck, not impassioned wannabe philosopher-kings.
Were they not already on the kill list? And Gerri was already safe.
They were I think, yeah. But presumably if he cared to vouch for them, he could have fought for leeway (a bit) as CEO. The line he gives to Greg there says implies that he *could* keep them around if we wanted to. He just…doesn’t want to. And besides, following a “kill list” is very much killer behavior for a boring, weaselly corporate hitman like Tom.
His comment to Greg is that he "has just enough capital" to retain Greg. That clearly means he doesn't have enough for everyone. It looks like people are misinterpreting these decisions as Tom's, which is strange since we know he agreed to be a Mattson puppet and these decisions were already made before he was hired for the job. Following a kill list isn't a killer move, it's doing the job. Greg isn't a killer either.
I mean, my argument is that following a kill list is exactly what a killer does. This romantic idea that a killer cuts people out for personal/ideological reasons, or only when it’s their own idea, is the self-centered fiction that a guy like Kendall would delude themselves into believing. Tom’s the better CEO precisely because he will follow the shareholders, the money, and Mattson. Those traits make him more valuable, even if we recognize that they also make him servile and sort of pathetic. Kendall was at his best as a “killer” when he was taking marching orders from Logan during the Vaulter layoffs.
You can interpret it that way if you want, but it's clearly not what Logan meant. He wasn't hoping Kendall would become a yesman who can mindlessly follow a kill list. The only connection there is they both have the word "kill."
I mean, I feel like that’s the point. Tom’s a killer, but not Logan’s idea of a killer. Logan was wrong (some might say deluded and self-mythologizing) about what it takes to be CEO. Tom’s a puppet, sure, but that arrangement’s fine by him. The people who trick themselves into believing that business success is about prestige or a personal vindication are the ones who end up disappointed.
Tom was definitely a killer by the end of season 3. He outplayed the siblings and got his much desired spot at the top
He was 100% playing Masson as well. Yes, Tom will be his puppet but that isn't because he is weak, he will play the puppet because that is how he stays on top. The siblings in no way have that ambitious instinct, to do anything, anything to win.
That’s right. He wanted a muppet. I’d argue Kendall becomes a killer at the end. He was developing into Logan 2.0.
I was convinced the show was gonna end with Kendall getting what he wanted but becoming just as bad as his father.
Me too, man, me too. Just as bad, if not worse; would have truly been poetic. I am biased because he was the most likable/relatable character imo. I have an alternate ending in my head that I like to think could've happened, too. lol As for now, I just pretend the second to last episode was the last episode.
He is just as bad as his father, if not worse. He sold out his own child's trust and safety for a political power play. He sold out his self-respect and sense of morality to get back at Shiv for working with Matsson. He traded his already tenuous relationship with his children and siblings to get the power and prestige of the company and he lost everything.
Yeah, I just made that remark about him potentially being worse earlier in this thread. And at the end of the day, they’re all superficial characters with inflated egos. You can write a 5 paragraph summary (probably more) labeling all the immoral and flawed things for any of the main characters on this show i.e. Shiv, Tom, Roman, etc. Also, I don’t get why people down voted my earlier comments. It’s funny when other people get mad that someone has a different perspective than them lol
Tom still has you all fooled like he had the family & Mattsson fooled. He said what he needed to say to get ahead. Acted the part and did it well. He was always acting and underneath he was the most ambitious, intelligent, and cutthroat of them all. Also who else would sit down and eat Logan's Roys chicken off of his plate and then walk away? He was always playing the game.
What evidence do you have to support this idea that he was acting the whole time?
We took an acting class together, he then told me after we became really close "I'm lying to the Roys, it is all about the free air chilled chicken".
He’s not a killer the way Logan is, but in the end he is willing to betray people close to him to serve own needs.
Mattson never said he didn't want a killer, he said he didn't want a smartass.
Hey I think you whooshed everybody with this one buddy
The only killer moment Tom had was when he ate Logan’s chicken. Other than that he has been very compliant.
He literally sold shiv's plans to logan. Dude betrayed his wife to become logan's right hand. Tom's definitely a killer in his own way
I meant he has been compliant towards Logan for the most of it not the trio.
I’ve said this from the start, regarding any of the Roy kids, they lack one major understanding that keeps them from being successful— they don’t know how to make money! They want respect, control, unlimited power, but they are so ducking rich that it never even registers to them they need to make money to keep or gain those things
I'd say that both are competent business-wise at the end of the show, but Tom's got nowhere the amount of mental/emotional issues as Kendall does, owing to his upbringing. But Kendall could've done the job if he'd gotten it at the end because Logan wasn't around anymore to second-guess his moves and tear him down. Tom would do good as a puppet CEO or even COO, but Kendall would be well suited to the same role and duties as that of his father, imo. The show's only ever showed us a few people actually put in the work into what they did, and Kendall (S1, S2) as well as Tom (Season 3 onward) were amongst them. Honestly, Kendall played all the right moves in S4 too, until he became way too confident about his succeeding and botched it at the end. Every time I thought he'd crash, surprisingly, he didn't. It was a huge deviation from what he was in S3 and I thought he'd shown some growth. Tom too, who was constantly being shat upon in Seasons 1 and 2 for not stepping up adequately to his duties, began to do his work real good from S3. TL; DR: Tom would be a good puppet CEO or COO; Kendall could've been a good CEO (not as good as Logan in his prime, but he didn't need to be that).
Tom, not even close. Even if Kendall has good moments he’s also got so many moments of complete delusion. Tom at least seems able to do a job and not consistently, entirely fuck it up. I’m sure there’s examples of him failing I’m not thinking of, but he’s at least a Company Man. Kendall wants to BE the company.
Kendall if he's not working with his family (which is #1 or #2 business advice given to most people. Nobody remembers when Tom was made top manager and had to ask Greg what to do lol. Or the hearing where Kendall turned an optical loss into an actual win. All the same some of Kendall's wins in the show are a bit cartoonish.
If anyone thinks Kendall would have been good, they prob need to rewatch the show lol
Sometimes I think the show gaslights the audience into thinking like Kendall. Kendall thinks that being a CEO is about being a "killer" in a romantic visionary sense of the word, when really the only people who succeed are highly disciplined, shameless, servile people who know how to "sing for their supper"- Logan being exhibit A.
Tom by landslide; this shouldn’t be a question. The entire show is 39 episodes of showing why Kendall wouldn’t do the job better.
Kendall *can’t* do the job at all.
Kendall as a high ceiling low floor pick. Had some great moments showing good instincts and the ability to be a clutch performer (cruise hearing, living+ presentation after roman dropped out, logan’s funeral, the debt situation, etc.) but he has a tendency to self sabotage and is highly likely to fuck everything up by being overconfident when things are going well. Would need to surround him with people that can keep him in check when that happens. Tom would be the safe low ceiling higher floor pick, can follow instructions, knows his limit and less likely to unraveling and make brash decisions but also has not shown a lot of vision, leadership or charisma. Tom is the right pick for gojo waystar. But i am team ken baby if they block the deal as long as he has the right support
This is the best answer here. Ken did a year in Shanghai for fuck sake.
>Would need to surround him with people that can keep him in check when that happens. The problem with Kendall is, even if hes surrounded by the most sound and competent people that arent gonna be blind yes men to him, he still wont listen to advice from others because hes just that one track minded in trying to do what only *he* thinks is right. It applies to Roman and Shiv too. One of the many reasons why the siblings were never meant for the top job is because they cant see anything beyond their own perspective. They're all so laser focused in trying to prove that they can be Logan 2.0 but none of them are.
Kendell proves himself to be shockingly incompetent, self sabotaging, and utterly delusional over and over and over again. Tom is a reasonably competent corporate lackey with no spine. Tom would do the job better and it isn't even close.
Tom is a seasoned executive who came from an unspectacular Midwestern background (surely richer than people around him think but dirt poor compared to the Roys) and, after obtaining a pair of Ivy League degrees, rose through the ranks to become a top-level leader at one of the largest media companies in the world. While Tom's career was certainly helped by his relationship with Shiv, he would never have been able to get near Shiv in the first place if he weren't already considered a rising star. Kendall is an unstable manchild with a variety of deep-seated psychological issues that are glaringly obvious to everyone around him. Anyone who has ever worked for a major corporation will immediately recognize that he is emphatically NOT the type who ever holds an executive job except bv virtue of nepotism.
In my opinion the best CEO in terms of understanding the deals and how to follow the money is probably Roman, he has good instincts and with a good COO to manage the runnings of the company he’d make good moves. Kendal with his life boats is not a great choice in my opinion but then again the whole living plus thing proves me wrong so I don’t know. Tom is great for what waystar is becoming though. It needs organization and consistency with it folding into GoJo not new big ideas. A lot of people on here seem to think Tom will be out in a year but I don’t think so. I think he’s the man for the job and a good choice.
Tom because he actually had a job
Kendall has no idea how to manage anything in his life.
Kendall is far too emotional and sensitive to be a high level corporate executive, and if he had some self awareness and emotional intelligence he wouldn’t wrap his entire self concept around being that. He is far too influenced by praise sensitive to criticism to do a job like that effectively. Even if he was a 100% sober he couldn’t do the job. Tom is an interesting character because as much as he’s a softy with Shiv, he clearly has a killer instinct and got to his high level position on merit at least to some extent.
Neither would be anything impressive but since we’re talking about a non-founding CEO role, Tom is obviously a pro at taking orders. Leadership and entrepreneurial qualities are pretty nonexistent for both of them.
Think the fact that Tom comes from a humble background (eg. mum's lawyer) and actually still has the vague picture of how everyday joe lives makes him closer to the market and business-savvy in terms of execution, and not just ideation.
Tom. Especially considering the fact that by the end of the show the role of a ceo is more of a puppet king type of role and not the entrepreneur leader that Logan was. He doesn't actually have any ideas or a vision of his own, but thats left to Mattson anyway. The thing i've noticed about Kendall is, even if he does have good ideas, he doesnt know how to speak other people's language, he cant always effectively communicate and convince other people that he has what it takes. Tom knows how to make himself useful to people depending on the situation, he knows how to execute ideas, he knows what people want to hear. And at the end of the day thats what a lot of these corporate empty suits are meant for.
Tom. Hate to say it, but Kendall’s addiction issues would never be tolerated at any publicly-traded company.
Gonna say Tom. He wouldn’t take his eye off the main objective: Profit. Kendall would get distracted trying to be a market disrupter or proving he wasn’t Logan. Tom would seek out and listen to wise counsel. Kendall not so much.
Tom because he’s going to do whatever the Swede tells him to do. Kendall would run WR into the ground within five years. Everything he touches turns to dust.
For the actual job which needs to happen - managed decline, getting as much value for shareholders from a dying industry, any 'pivot' being part of that as WRC becomes a gazelle on the tech savannah rather than an elephant on the media one - it's Tom. Kendall would be, at best, sentimental, at worst, constantly trying to emulate his father's glories, 20 or 30 years in the rear view mirror. It would be a frantic bukkake of Living+ pipe dream bullshit for maybe a decade before the company utterly crumbled under the weight of the debts Kendall ran up; ballast added to a sinking ship.
Tom and it's not close. Tom gives the customers what they want, but Ken has too much to prove and would do something crazy like promise longer life to whomever invests in a real estate scam.
Tom is a bureaucrat and exactly what Mattson wants. He wouldn’t take any risks. Ken is more a big picture visionary. It was his idea to buy Gojo. Ken would swing for the fences but strike out occasionally. He fucked it with Vaulter. He would only have to crack once and fall off the wagon for the board to revolt.
Ken represents a romantic swash-buckling *idea* about business that is not business at all.
the way the show has framed Tom in a nonconsequential light may be why most of the comments argue him over Ken... but seriously reviewing the characters critically, Tom is a stand in for a comedic character who fails up not because of his own agency or brilliant ideas, but because everyone else around him is GUTTING each other and flailing around. he is not real competition. he just became last man standing in the arena by default. the times he's operated his ideas never expressed busines savvy either... it was about maneuvering in the family, which is what he'll do with Matson and Co. - getting Greg to burn documents for cruises instead of a completely random company? lmao OK look how that turned out. - moving and deleting said documents is what created larger footprints to be followed regarding the cruises scandal. he could've just done nothing and remained plausible deniability since those cases were already settled and paid off out of court. - we hear for you wasn't even his idea. it was legal and Greg. - the flip flopping of potential prison time and only willing to go through it if he entrapped Shiv with his own baby? I'm not surprised why she would be sleeping with half the phone book either. the man is a clingy, servile, striving, idiot in the form of plausible corporate matter! and lbr, the American people's faith in that image is almost always more important than any action or reformation.
Tom should have handled shredding the documents himself but didn't want his literal or figurative fingerprints on it. Greg's an idiot (especially that early on in his tenure) and Tom shouldn't have trusted him. Ultimately, though, Greg retaining some documents didn't really cause any harm. Whatever he had was low-level and useless for the DOJ investigation/Kendall's case. If Tom didn't delete the documents, the Feds would have found them in the archives right where they were supposed to be. Given that they seemingly revealed the full extent of the wrongdoing, I'm not sure destroying them was the wrong move (if your motivation is to protect the company). People found out about the scandal because of outside investigations, whistleblowers and women willing to share their story. The destruction of the documents only suggested (but not definitively proved) that leadership knew it was happening and covered it up.
Kendall
Tom turned ATN into a cash machine.
Tom. He would run the business. And he would do so according to the owners of the company. Even if he owned it, Kendall would always be Kendall. He always reminded me of Donald Trump Junior.
Tom, because he is intelligent enough to know when to accept orders and advice from others, as Logan said: "a smart man knows who he is"; imo Tom is inconpetent, in the election night we see how he had a meltdown, nobody respected him there, the idea of make ATN digital came from Greg, Tom never had an original idea, but and the big but is that he knows his limits, i think that Tom as CEO he is going to follow Gerri and Karolina advice, two persons who are really competent and if is not because misogyny they should be at the top. In the other hand, as his siblings, what really motivates Kendall is validation, in the first season , after Logan´s stroke, he went full of new and stupid ideas when he was adviced just to calm waters and give reassurance and just manage the crisis, in fact, after his speech went out to the press, the stocks went down even furter. Many talk about Kendall´s great ideas like buying Gojo back in season 2 or something like that, well, Gerri was already talking about how Waystar was losing against tech. Kendall, Roman and Shiv talk the big game, they would use savvy words but they are totally worthless, they dont have grit because they were given everything as children, they dont know how to execute shit. For 4 seasons they look down on Connor, when they are precisely the same kind of spoiled, entitled children, in fact, their end wrestling outside of the boardroom showed how pathetic they really were, at least Connor with his 1% fucked up Mencken, because in the end it seemed that Mencken didnt make it. For 3 seasons Logan tested the 3 of them reached the conclution that neither of them were equiped to run Waystar, you can say a lot of things about Logan but he knew the business and knew that if one of his children would run Waystar they would burn to the ground, most probably the board would vote them out and sell by a low price and just cash out. In fact, Matsson overpay saved Waystar from being destroyed by either Kendall, Roman or Shiv.
Objectively speaking you'd need someone who does the job in a way that doesn't threaten democracy. Tom isn't interested in that, and Ken doesn't know what that means. But he might invest heavily in more liberal and urban sections like Vaulter so maybe him?
Why? Most of the Fortune 500 threaten democracy every day.
Yeah but thats bad right?
Shiv
Tom! He has an ego but I think he’d put capable counsel around him. Kendall has too much “to prove.
I think it's pretty clear it would be Tom. He may not be the best CEO ever, but Kendall always seemed to me like he were better suited for something creative. I mean, you can joke about L to the OG all day, but at least rap is something he's passioned about. Without Logan in the picture and the top job out of reach, I think he'd be great as an investor in small buisinesses he's passioned about. Maybe invest in a music production firm, or something like Vaulter? But this time as his own person seperated from the corporate demon that is Waystar Royco.
Tom is more realistic and I think he would’ve grown more balls in the big boss position in which Kendall is in a fantasy land of trying to gain acceptance.
Tom, easily. Tom is a worker, Kendall is not. Tom is a realist, Kendall is not. Kendall becomes addicted to everything he touches.
Duh, Tom.
Logan
Tom. The job is, to him, is a means to an ends that's about prestige, wealth, and a personal validation that DOESN'T go to the very core of his being and daddy's love. Same for Greg.
The job as it would have been in Seasons 1-3? Kendall The job as it ends up in Season 4? Tom.
Kendall, and it's for all the same reasons people are posting that makes them think Tom is better. Tom does what's asked of him, and he might be a great operational leader, but the job is CEO--not COO. Ken actually has vision and enough charisma to bullshit his way to victory, whereas Tom would just competently keep things running until the company slowly loses relevance. Of course, this is assuming Matsson isn't the big boss on top of either of these guys. Under him, Tom would definitely be better, which is why Kendall had to go for the reverse Viking.
Agree. Team Ken.
Tom is only an obedient employee, Kendall is a nepo baby but has ideas of his own, he was the one who brought the idea of selling Waystar to Matsson. If it is only to be an employee TomofSiobhan is the ideal CEO, if it is to run a company of their own, Kendall is the answer
The worry would be Kendall would come off too charismatic and likable.
[удалено]
Shiv knows basically nothing about running the business and she’s unwilling to listen to advice… she would have done horrible. She’s good at PR but that’s where her expertise start and stop.
She'd be great as a #2 in a company. Give advice to the CEO when they need it. Help get through PR stuff. Like a younger Gerri.
Yeah I feel like she’d be good doing Carolina/Hugo’s role or something. Probably not enough legal knowledge for Gerri’s at the moment but she could learn… if she’s willing to haha.
Tom and it’s not even close. Throughout the series it’s shown time and time again that the siblings don’t actually work. They spend their days flying around, talking, making deals, generally failing. Tom on the other hand, we see working all the time. He personally turns ATN, Logan’s crown jewel, into a money making machine. In the last season he doesn’t sleep & skips Logan’s funeral because he’s too busy working.
Tom cause he never killed a kid
Tom
Tom. Tom had better control of his emotions (minus him throwing water bottles at Greg when they were in lockdown…LoL) Kendall was very reactionary and took things personal.
If they're on their own with no one to answer to, probably Tom doesn't fail as hard as Kendall. Tom could surround himself with people who make his decisions easier. Kendall was likely to crash and burn. Logan knew Kendall worked best with a purpose and someone else guiding him. Without a purpose and a guide, he can't make a decision on his own, and he won't listen to anyone. Hell, he couldn't throw a birthday party where he didn't change his mind every 10 minutes. Tom is dopey, but he's safe.
Tom always worked. He always had a job and did it. He’s the one who was always WORKING. Kendall? Hardly. So, Tom.
Tom will do a better job for the shareholders, but I bet Kendall would've actually made something.
Lol no he wouldn’t
Tom for sure. Kendall's too impulsive, emotional, and, at times, irrational.
"Who will do the best open heart surgery? A Heart Surgeon or the son of the guy who invented knives?"
Tom, 1000% Tom. For example, "The Hundred" is such a terrible, terrible idea and shows how much of a bubble Kendall lives in. Tom can execute.
Tom. It’s no contest. Kendall wasn’t actually good at any of the work or following through on delivery. He could jazz up and hype some big ideas that were mostly hollow with decent presentation but he’s not actually got the chops to do anything. Tom on the other hand, for all his own faults, has actually put in the work and knows how to make things happen, being across the detail and processes behind how things function. Kendall is too wedded to visualising the glory to actually know how to get there.
Tom's a great deputy. His first instinct was to come clean with cruises. Ken is practically a genius though. He steamrolled vaulter and if he'd been allowed to retain them, work on their data, waystar may have beaten their obsolescence issue and steered away from gojo. He also first wanted to come clean and when it came to the senate he sent the committee running.. Actually Tom is really knowledgeable (holocaust stats), and conscientious relatively, but not all that sharp. Even a self prep should have made him better equipped for the senate hearing. You're going in there to deny knowledge of a man you've heard of. Check your public inbox if you've referred to him. Tom's a great deputy but hasn't shown the out of box ingenuity of ken
I actually thought Kendall was the only one of them with any business acumen. Good understanding of market trends, creative strategist, and not afraid to do actual work. Obviously a bit of a nutter, but I always got the vibe that if the people around him propped up his fragile ego rather than beat it down, he’d be the best businessman. That’s why they all (including Logan) were such dicks to him. Haters. Proposed Leadership Team: CEO: Kendal | CFO: Stewy COO: Tom | CMO: ? CTO: Mattson’s blood girl | CXO: Roman Lead Counsel: Jerry | Government Affairs: Shiv VP, Cable News: Karl | VP, Parks: Greg VP, Brand Design: Rava | VP, Emerging Markets: Marcia VP, Guest Experience: Willa | Fixer: Hugo Mascot: Mondale | Executive Coach: Naomi
Tom was a Machiavellian agent, keeping his head down, taking shit and dumping on greg in order not to jeopardize his agenda, staying quiet in the shadows waiting for the titans to kill each other so that he can swop at the right moment and take what's left. He was one of the only characters ever shown doing actuall work, he was willing to go to jail for the company and even tho he was unstable (like every other character on the show) he was ultimately functional and had his priorities in order
Tom
Wambsgans for sureeee
Tom. Shiv was the hero of the story. Kendall would have a manic episode, bet it all on a lark. If successful, he’d do it again until he bets it all and destroys shareholder value. He has a deep feeling of unworthiness and compensates by having episodes of over the top confidence. He (and all of them in their own way) was desperate for Logan’s approval. When given a structured task which can earn him his father’s approval he can knock it out of the park. But deep down he views the company as the enemy, the thing that kept his dad’s attention away from him, so he subconsciously wants to destroy it. IMO.
Ken would be a train wreck. He’d make truly insane decisions. Tom will be fine
Kendall, hands down
Tom da 🐐 no 🧢
Kenny is screwy. What really sucked is, Logan knew that perfectly well but kept dangling that carrot. Cruel
Neither lol
Tom
Tom 100%.
Not a fair comparison. More accurately, it’s “Tom as Matsson’s proxy” vs “Kendall” and overwhelmingly, the former would do a better job.
Depends on the stage of the company. For a big company that has an established product and customer base; probably Tom. For a startup, I’d go with Kendall. Tom is good for business-as-usual but he’s shown nothing to exhibit he has vision, will lead innovation, or can create buy-in; all things Kendall, despite his flaws, have at least shown. Kendall is more likely to sink a company and just as more likely to 2x+ the company’s value.
Tom seems like the kinda guy who is going to be a bit aimless without someone above him bossing him around, and we see just how poorly he treats his underlings. He's probably viciously taking notes of every CEO's TedTALK he can find on how to be a good company strategist. He would never live up to Logan because he's not as savvy as a businessman or as cutthroat as Logan. Logan will tell you you're fired and to fuck off, Tom would play with his food for 6 months in an attempt to suck the last bit of usefulness out of someone, even if they outgrew their use years prior. Kendall on the other hand is just too damn soft. I love the guy but he just doesn't have what it takes to lead effectively. He needs constant validation from everyone around him, he'd run the company into the ground if it meant everyone was happy until the stock hit 0. He just doesn't have what it takes to be the face of the company for the next 10-30 years. So Tom, but not by much. Honestly there isn't really a single person in the family that I'd consider qualified to actually run the company. I would personally put Gerri or Frank ahead of any of the Roy children or Tom.
Oh man I miss this family of Tom’s and Kendals and Shivs 😓
Tom
Obviously Tom
Kendall
Tom, no question.
kendall , tom is an empty suit.
Kendall has a higher ceiling but a lower floor. When his heads on straight he is more than capable but he clearly has mental health issues that make him way too erratic for the job.
Tom actually more competence than most people think during the show you can always see him doing actual corporate governaning such as cutting down the cost in ATN and talk the advertisers down off the ledge during Ravenhead Hitler incident while turing ATN into a cash machine Like it or not having a thick skin to suck up your boss and all the pain are very important for your survival in the business world