Cyanogen's Steve Kondik leaves the company; blames co-founder Kirt McMaster for failure

From job cuts and reshuffle to failed strategy, it clearly wasn’t a great year for Cyanogen Inc. And adding to the woes were reports around Cyanogen Inc packing bags and moving to a smaller Palo Alto office and its co-founder Steve Kondik is on his way out. Now, he officially confirmed the departure. https://twitter.com/cyanogen/status/804153691599085568 Things haven’t been looking pretty through last couple of weeks and Kondik had spoken ( via AndroidPolice) about the woes, but hadn’t outright mentioned his exit. He spoke about the mismanagement at CyanogenMod Inc statements like ‘bullet through’ the head tat brought about a lot of embarrassment and worries to deal with. “My co-founder [ McMaster ] apparently became unhappy with running the business and not owning the vision. This is when the “bullet to the head” and other misguided media nonsense started, and the bad business deals were signed. Being second in command, all I could do was try and stop it, do damage control, and hope every day that something new didn’t happen. The worst of it happened internally and it became a generally shitty place to work because of all the conflict. I think the backlash from those initial missteps convinced him that what we had needed to be destroyed,” he wrote. “It hurts, a lot. I lost a lot of friends, and I’m truely sorry to everyone I let down. I wish I had made different choices and trusted different people (especially one in particular early on), but all I care about now is figuring out what to do next,” he added. Kondik could probably attempt to crowdfund a relaunch of the ROM and structure a new company around the effort as a 501.3c - a non-profit organization, according to the report. “What’s next, apparently, is the question of reenergizing and reorganizing the CyanogenMod community effort. The problem with that is that Cyanogen Inc. has control over some of the brand and trademarks around Cyanogen and CyanogenMod, and so the whole thing will likely have to be forked and rebranded,” the report added. Cyanogen is believed to have cut down 20 percent of its workforce as its OS failed to attract phone makers and audiences. The job cuts come as a result of the startup worked on a new strategy that is being overseen by Chief Operating Officer Lior Tal who has joined the company recently from Facebook. There was no prior notification and employees who didn’t lose their jobs were asked to not make it work, and the ones who did were asked to leave. Meanwhile, Tal explained the move to the office in Palo Alto. Here’s what he wrote: Earlier this week I shared the plan to consolidate Cyanogen’s sites into a single team in Palo Alto by the end of the year, offering the Seattle employees an option to relocate to California.  The purpose of the change is to improve the communication and performance of the team which will now operate under one roof. This consolidation effort will allow us to build in greater efficiencies and reduce restrictions in our product development lifecycle. Understandably some are unable to follow their role and relocate. We appreciate and value all of the amazing work these individuals have provided to the growth and success of Cyanogen.  With these changes, Cyanogen has separated ties with Steve Kondik, allowing him to continue to forge his path as he sees fit. We wish him the best of luck in his next venture.  I’m very excited about our new consolidated team here in Palo Alto and the opportunity to leverage our core technologies developed over the last few years in new and exciting ways. The company is well funded and will continue to recruit great people to help expand the core functions of our team.