Zynga to undergo massive reorganization

CEO Mattrick splits company into three divisions, announces departure of three top executives

Don Mattrick was appointed as the new CEO of Zynga only around month and a half ago, but he is already putting his personal stamp on the company.

Zynga is undergoing a major restructuring, as well as saying goodbye to even more high level executives, Mattrick revealed in a company memo on Tuesday.

"Over the past month, I have had a chance to interact with a cross section of our employees and have been able to get a general sense of the caliber of people working here, the passion for winning and desire to get Zynga back to a strong leadership,” Mattrick said the note.

“In parallel to these meetings, I have been working with our leaders to review different parts of our business in order to develop a set of operating principles to help reset the company.”

Mattrick has decided to split Zynga's operations into 3 divisions: Functional; Studios; and Tech, Live Ops, and Publishing.

The divisions will have a combined 13 managers. They are:

Functional:

• Reggie Davis, General Counsel, EVP Legal, Corporate and Business Affairs (which includes Corporate and Business Development and Communications)
• Mark Vranesh, CFO, EVP
• Meg Makalou, VP Human Resources.

Studios:

• Steve Chiang, EVP Games, Villes and International
• Barry Cottle, EVP Games, Social Casino
• Travis Boatman, SVP Games, With Friends and Network
• Tim LeTourneau, SVP Games, FarmVille
• Steve Parkis, SVP Games, Midcore
• Mark Skaggs, SVP Games, and Jon Tien, SVP Games, Casual

Tech, live ops and publishing:

• Nick Tornow, CTO, VP
• Dorion Carroll, CIO, VP
• Adam Sussman, SVP Game Publishing (which includes distribution, direct advertising sales and ops)

All of the above will report directly to Mattrick.

In addition to the restructuring, Mattrick also announced the departures of three high level executives: COO David Ko, CTO Cadir Lee, and HR chief Colleen McCreary are all going to be leaving the company.

"Each person has contributed to the growth of Zynga and I would like to take this opportunity to thank Cadir Lee for his dedication in the creation of a world class technical organization during his 5 year tenure, Colleen for her work with our recruitment and people process over the last 4 years and David Ko for the 3 years that he spent in leading various teams across the organization," Mattrick wrote.

"We appreciate their contributions to Zynga’s first chapter and wish them well in their future endeavors."

There will be a "All-Hands meeting" held on Wednesday, where Mattrick promised to answer any further questions that Zynga employees may have. 

Zynga's rough ride

It should come as much of a shock, as Zynga has been on the road toward reinvention for a while now.

The company has not only been trying to make itself leaner by shutting down numerous studios, and laying off a big chunk of its workforce. 

On top of that, Zynga also lost its long time CEO Mark Pincus, who stepped down in favor Mattrick, the president of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, in June. 

In a call following Zynga's latest earnings report, Mattrick said it may take up to a year to turn Zynga around, and then outlined what he planned to do over the next 90 days to make that happen.

"Over the course of the next few months, I'll be working with our leadership team to challenge previous assumptions and to focus our business fundamentals, which, candidly, we struggled with over the past year," he said.

With this massive reorganization of the company, it looks like that process has finally begun.

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