Before a packed room at the fintech conference Intersekt in Melbourne last week, Xero chief executive Sukhinder Singh Cassidy took a moment to praise her company’s culture.
“If you want to build enduringly large, great companies,” Singh Cassidy said, “you want systems that are conducive to risk taking… culturally and regulatorily”. ‘Xeros’, what employees are known as internally, are the opposite of entitled but proud of the company’s global ambitions, she explained.
Singh Cassidy is facing a backlash from shareholders over her $25 million pay package, which ranks her among the best paid CEOs on the ASX despite Xero’s struggling share price.
But inside the company, another backlash is brewing as management seeks to weed out under-performers and replace more of the tasks handled by engineers with AI.