I feel sorry for any CEO who actually steps down to spend more time with his/her family. That explanation has now more or less been completely co-opted by "Our CEO got caught in an embarrassing scandal and they need to fade from the public eye for a bit." I now assume that anyone who gives that reason on their way out must have done something terrible that is yet or about to come to light.
It’s like Thiel’s point about how monopolies always talk about the open market and small fish talk about being a monopoly. In this case, if you’re actually stepping down to spend time with family, you say “I’m looking for my next challenge.”
Our company recently had two executives leave to "pursue other opportunities". I saw an announcement from another company about one of them, but not the other one. I wonder if they are "spending more time with their family"
This recently came up when Kellyanne Conway stepped down. She said it was to spend more time with her family, no one believed her, but all evidence points to it really truly being the case. Her husband also stepped down from his job and her daughter stopped tweeting about how much she hates her parents.
A lot of CEOs step down with no drama! I think most people only think "scandal" when there's already a related scandal... I can't think of any CEOs/execs who have stepped down with suspicion without any other indicators of a scandal.
The reason that euphemism flies is because of the truth behind it: people regularly make life changes to prioritize family life. The other 99.9% of people who cite this reason for change will drown out the minority that use it as a euphemism for getting caught doing bad things.
