After two decades of climbing the corporate ladder at companies ranging from ABC, ESPN, and Charter Communications (commonly known as Spectrum), Timm Chiusano quit it all to become a content creator.
He wasn’t just walking away from high titles, but a high salary, too. In his peak years, Chiusano made $600,000 to $800,000 annually. But in June of 2024, after giving a 12-week notice, he “responsibility fired himself” from his corporate job as VP of production and creative services at Charter.
He did it all to help others navigate the challenges of a workplace, and appreciate the most mundane parts of life on TikTok.
most people are posting their 2024 recaps; these are a few of my favorite moments from the year that was, but i need to start reintroducing myself too i dont have a college degree, no one in my life knew that until i was 35 when i eventually got my foot in the door in my early 20’s after a few years of substitute teaching and part time jobs, i thought for sure i had found the career path of my dreams in live sports production i didn’t think i had a chance of surviving that first college football season but i busted my ass, stuck around and got promoted 5 times in 5 years then i met a girl in Las Vegas, got married in 7 months, and freaked out about my career that had me travelling 36 weeks a year i had to find a more stable “desk job”, i was scared shitless that i was pigeonholed and the travel would eventually destroy my marriage i crafted a narative for espn arguing they needed me on their marketing team because of my unique perspective coming from the production side i got rejected, but kept trying and a year i got that job the 7 years with espn were incredible, but also exhausting and raised all kinds of questions about corporate america, toxic situations, and capitalism in general why was i borderline heart attack stressed so often when i could see that my ideas were literally generating 2,000 times the money that i was getting paid? in 2012 i had a kid and in 2013 i got the biggest job of my career to reinvent how to produce 20,000 commercials a year for small business it took 12 rounds of interviews, a drug test i somehow passed, and a background check that finally made me tell my wife of 8 years that i didnt have a college degree they brought me in the thursday before my first day and told me what i told grace in that clip the next decade was an insane blur; i saw everything one would ever see in their career from the perspective of an executive at a fortune 100 i started making tiktoks, kinda blacked out at some point in 2019 and responsibly fired myself in 2024 to see what i might be capable of on my own with all the skills i picked up along my career journey now the mission is pay what i know forward, and see if i can become the mr rogers of corporate america cc: @grace beverley @Ryan Holiday @Subway Oracle
What started as short-video vlogs on just about anything in 2020 (reviews on protein bars, sushi, and sneakers) later transitioned to videos on growing up, and dealing with life’s challenges, like coming to terms when you have a toxic boss. Today, his platform on TikTok has over 1 million followers.
With the help of going viral from his “loop” format where videos end and seamlessly circle back to the beginning, he began making more videos as a side-hustle on top of his day-to-day tasks in the office.
“How can I get people to be smarter and more comfortable about their careers in ways that are gonna help on a day-to-day basis?” Chiusano told Fortune.
Today, he could go by many titles: former vice president at a Fortune 100 company, motivational speaker, dad, content creator, or as he labels himself, the Mister Rogers of Corporate America.
Just as the late public television icon helped kids navigate the complexities of childhood, Chiusano wants to help young adults think about how to approach their careers and their potential to make an impact.
“Mister Rogers is the greatest of all time in his space. I will never get to that level of impact. But it’s an easy way to describe what I’m trying to do, and it consistently gives me a goal to strive for,” he said. “There are some parallels here with the quirkiness.”
Firing himself after 25 years in the corporate world
Even with years in corporate, Chiusano doesn’t resemble the look of a typical buttoned-up executive. Today, he has more of a relaxed Brooklyn dad attire, with a sleeve of tattoos and a confidence to blend in with any trendy middle aged man in Soho. During our interview, he showed off one of the first tattoos he got: two businessmen shaking hands, a reference to Radiohead’s OK Computer album.
“This is a dope ass Monday in your 40s,” began one of his videos.
It consisted of Chiusano doing everyday things such as eating leftovers, going to the gym, training for the NYC marathon, taking out the trash, dropping his daughter off at school, a rehearsal for a Ted Talk, eating lunch with his wife, and brand deal meetings. Though the content sounds pretty normal, that’s the point.
“The reason why I fired myself in the first place was to be here,” he says in the video while picking his daughter up from school.
Today, Chiusano spends his days making content on navigating workplace culture, public speaking, brand deals, brand partnerships, executive coaching, writing a book, and the most important job: being a dad to his 13-year-old daughter Evelyn.
“I’m basically flat [in salary] to where I was, and this is everything I could ever want in the world,” he said. “The ability to send my kid to the school she’s been going to, eat sushi takeout almost as much as I’d like, and do nice things for my wife.”
In fact, when sitting inside one of his favorite New York City spots, Lure Fishbar, he keeps getting stopped by regulars who know him by name. He points out that one of his favorite interviews he filmed here was with legendary filmmaker Ken Burns.
Advice to Gen Z
In a time where Gen Z has been steering to more unconventional paths, like content creation or skill trades rather than just a 9-to-5 office job, Chiusano opens up a lens to what life looks like when deciding to be present rather than always looking for what’s next—a mistake he said he made in his 20s.
Instead, he wants to teach the younger generation to build skills for as long as you can, but “if you are unhappy, that’s a very different conversation.”
“I think some people will make themselves more unhappy because they feel like that’s what’s expected of a situation,” he said.
“I would love to be able to empower your generation more, to be like somebody’s gonna have to be the head of HR at that super random company to put cool standards and practices in place for better work-life balance for the employees.”
Massachusetts’ highest court heard oral arguments Friday in the state’s lawsuit arguing that Meta designed features on Facebook and Instagram to make them addictive to young users.
The lawsuit, filed in 2024 by Attorney General Andrea Campbell, alleges that Meta did this to make a profit and that its actions affected hundreds of thousands of teenagers in Massachusetts who use the social media platforms.
“We are making claims based only on the tools that Meta has developed because its own research shows they encourage addiction to the platform in a variety of ways,” said State Solicitor David Kravitz, adding that the state’s claim has nothing to do the company’s algorithms or failure to moderate content.
Meta said Friday that it strongly disagrees with the allegations and is “confident the evidence will show our longstanding commitment to supporting young people.” Its attorney, Mark Mosier, argued in court that the lawsuit “would impose liabilities for performing traditional publishing functions” and that its actions are protected by the First Amendment.
“The Commonwealth would have a better chance of getting around the First Amendment if they alleged that the speech was false or fraudulent,” Mosier said. “But when they acknowledge that its truthful that brings it in the heart of the First Amendment.”
Several of the judges, though, seem to more concerned about Meta’s functions such as notifications than the content on its platforms.
“I didn’t understand the claims to be that Meta is relaying false information vis-a-vis the notifications but that it has created an algorithm of incessant notifications … designed so as to feed into the fear of missing out, fomo, that teenagers generally have,” Justice Dalila Wendland said. “That is the basis of the claim.”
Justice Scott Kafker challenged the notion that this was all about a choose to publish certain information by Meta.
“It’s not how to publish but how to attract you to the information,” he said. “It’s about how to attract the eyeballs. It’s indifferent the content, right. It doesn’t care if it’s Thomas Paine’s ‘Common Sense’ or nonsense. It’s totally focused on getting you to look at it.”
Meta is facing federal and state lawsuits claiming it knowingly designed features — such as constant notifications and the ability to scroll endlessly — that addict children.
In 2023, 33 states filed a joint lawsuit against the Menlo Park, California-based tech giant claiming that Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent, in violation of federal law. In addition, states including Massachusetts filed their own lawsuits in state courts over addictive features and other harms to children.
Newspaper reports, first by The Wall Street Journal in the fall of 2021, found that the company knew about the harms Instagram can cause teenagers — especially teen girls — when it comes to mental health and body image issues. One internal study cited 13.5% of teen girls saying Instagram makes thoughts of suicide worse and 17% of teen girls saying it makes eating disorders worse.
Critics say Meta hasn’t done enough to address concerns about teen safety and mental health on its platforms. A report from former employee and whistleblower Arturo Bejar and four nonprofit groups this year said Meta has chosen not to take “real steps” to address safety concerns, “opting instead for splashy headlines about new tools for parents and Instagram Teen Accounts for underage users.”
Meta said the report misrepresented its efforts on teen safety.
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Associated Press reporter Barbara Ortutay in Oakland, California, contributed to this report.
Inigo Fraser Jenkins once warned that passive investing was worse for society than Marxism. Now he says even that provocative framing may prove too generous.
In his latest note, the AllianceBernstein strategist argues that the trillions of dollars pouring into index funds aren’t just tracking markets — they are distorting them. Big Tech’s dominance, he says, has been amplified by passive flows that reward size over substance. Investors are funding incumbents by default, steering more capital to the biggest names simply because they already dominate benchmarks.
He calls it a “dystopian symbiosis”: a feedback loop between index funds and platform giants like Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Nvidia Corp. that concentrates power, stifles competition, and gives the illusion of safety. Unlike earlier market cycles driven by fundamentals or active conviction, today’s flows are automatic, often indifferent to risk.
Fraser Jenkins is hardly alone in sounding the alarm. But his latest critique has reignited a debate that’s grown harder to ignore. Just 10 companies now account for more than a third of the S&P 500’s value, with tech names driving an outsize share of 2025’s gains.
“Platform companies and a lack of active capital allocation both imply a less effective form of capitalism with diminished competition,” he wrote in a Friday note. “A concentrated market and high proportion of flows into cap weighted ‘passive’ indices leads to greater risks should recent trends reverse.”
While the emergence of behemoth companies might be reflective of more effective uses of technology, it could also be the result of failures of anti-trust policies, among other things, he argues. Artificial intelligence might intensify these issues and could lead to even greater concentrations of power among firms.
His note, titled “The Dystopian Symbiosis: Passive Investing and Platform Capitalism,” is formatted as a fictional dialog between three people who debate the topic. One of the characters goes as far as to argue that the present situation requires an active policy intervention — drawing comparisons to the breakup of Standard Oil at the start of the 20th century — to restore competition.
data-srcyload
In a provocative note titled “The Silent Road to Serfdom: Why Passive Investing is Worse Than Marxism” and written nearly a decade ago, Fraser Jenkins argued that the rise of index-tracking investing would lead to greater stock correlations, which would impede “the efficient allocation of capital.” His employer, AllianceBernstein, has continued to launch ETFs since the famous research was published, though its launches have been actively managed.
Other active managers have presented similar viewpoints — managers at Apollo Global Management last year said the hidden costs of the passive-investing juggernaut included higher volatility and lower liquidity.
There have been strong rebuttals to the critique: a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. study showed the role of fundamentals remains an all-powerful driver for stock valuations; Citigroup Inc. found that active managers themselves exert a far bigger influence than their passive rivals on a stock’s performance relative to its industry.
“ETFs don’t ruin capitalism, they exemplify it,” said Eric Balchunas, Bloomberg Intelligence’s senior ETF analyst. “The competition and innovation are through the roof. That is capitalism in its finest form and the winner in that is the investor.”
Since Fraser Jenkins’s “Marxism” note, the passive juggernaut has only grown. Index-tracking ETFs, which have grown in popularity thanks to their ease of trading and relatively cheaper management fees, are often cited as one of the primary culprits in this debate. The segment has raked in $842 billion so far this year, compared with the $438 billion hauled in by actively managed funds, even as there are more active products than there are passive ones, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Of the more than $13 trillion that’s in ETFs overall, $11.8 trillion is parked in passive vehicles. The majority of ETF ownership is concentrated in low-cost index funds that have significantly reduced the cost for investors to access financial markets.
In Fraser Jenkins’s new note, one of his fictitious characters ask another what the “dystopian symbiosis” implies for investors.
“The passive index is riskier than it has been in the past,” the character answers. “The scale of the flows that have been disproportionately into passive cap-weighted funds with a high exposure to the mega cap companies implies the risk of a significant negative wealth effect if there is an upset to expectations for those large companies.”
The must-haves for building a market-leading business include vision, talent, culture, product innovation and customer focus. But what’s the secret to success with a merger or acquisition?
I was asked about this in the wake of Salesforce’s recently completed $8 billion acquisition of Informatica. In part, I believe that people are paying attention because deal-making is up in 2025. M&A volume reached $2.2 trillion in the first half of the year, a 27% increase compared to a year ago, according to JP Morgan. Notably, 72% of that volume involved deals greater than $1 billion.
There will be thousands of mergers and acquisitions in the United States this year across industries and involving companies of all sizes. It’s not unusual for startups to position themselves to be snapped up. But Informatica, founded in 1993, didn’t fit that mold. We have been building, delivering, supporting and partnering for many years. Much of the value we bring to Salesforce and its customers is our long-earned experience and expertise in enterprise data management.
Although, in other respects, a “legacy” software company like ours — founded well before cloud computing was mainstream — and early-stage startups aren’t so different. We all must move fast and differentiate. And established vendors and growth-oriented startups have a few things in common when it comes to M&A, as well.
First and foremost is a need to ensure that the strategies of the two companies involved are in alignment. That seems obvious, but it’s easier said than done. Are their tech stacks based on open protocols and standards? Are they cloud-native by design? And, now more than ever, are they both AI-powered and AI-enabling? All of these came together in the case of Salesforce and Informatica, including our shared belief in agentic AI as the next major breakthrough in business technology.
Don’t take your foot off the gas
In the days after the acquisition was completed, I was asked during a media interview if good luck was a factor in bringing together these two tech industry stalwarts. Replace good luck with good timing, and the answer is a resounding, “Yes!”
As more businesses pursue the productivity and other benefits of agentic AI, they require high-quality data to be successful. These are two areas where Salesforce and Informatica excel, respectively. And the agentic AI opportunity — estimated to grow to $155 billion by 2030 — is here and now. So the timing of the acquisition was perfect.
Tremendous effort goes into keeping an organization on track, leading up to an acquisition and then seeing it through to a smooth and successful completion. In the few months between the announcement of Salesforce’s intent to acquire Informatica and the close, we announced new partnerships and customer engagements and a fall product release that included autonomous AI agents, MCP servers and more.
In other words, there’s no easing into the new future. We must maintain the pace of business because the competitive environment and our customers require it. That’s true whether you’re a small, venture-funded organization or, like us, an established firm with thousands of employees and customers. Going forward we plan to keep doing what we do best: help organizations connect, manage and unify their AI data.
Out with the old, in with the new
It’s wrong to think of an acquisition as an end game. It’s a new chapter.
Business leaders and employees in many organizations have demonstrated time and again that they are quite good at adapting to an ever-changing competitive landscape. A few years ago, we undertook a company-wide shift from on-premises software to cloud-first. There was short-term disruption but long-term advantage. It’s important to develop an organizational mindset that thrives on change and transformation, so when the time comes, you’re ready for these big steps.
So, even as we take pride in all that we accomplished to get to this point, we now begin to take on a fresh identity as part of a larger whole. It’s an opportunity to engage new colleagues and flourish professionally. And importantly, customers will be the beneficiaries of these new collaborations and synergies. On the day Informatica was welcomed into the Salesforce family and ecosystem, I shared my feeling that “the best is yet to come.” That’s my North Star and one I recommend to every business leader forging ahead into an M&A evolution — because the truest measure of success ultimately will be what we accomplish next.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
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