Marc doesn’t need me or anyone else to toot his ho-n for him, but I will anyway. If you don’t know who he is, google him. His accomplishments and the respect people have for him industry-wide speaks volumes.
What those search results won’t tell you is how he is as a leader. When the people who have worked for him tell you he is irreplaceable, it is because they have never experienced the same level of trust, empowerment, and opportunities under any other leader at Fiserv or anywhere else. Marc sees things in people they don’t always see in themselves and gives them the space to shine. He has a keen eye for talent and actually cares about the people under him. He can also spot a BSer a mile away. On top of that, he’s a very likable, down-to-earth kind of guy who happens to be a technical genius.
What others have pointed to in this thread as reasons for his forced departure are not even things that were necessarily in Marc’s direct realm of influence. Some are Product decisions and a lack of stability in Product leadership, some are higher-level decisions and directives, some were the failure of other orgs to stay current and proactively eliminate their own tech debt, some are lack of cooperation between departments. Fiserv has a way of making any brilliant idea struggle to get off the ground under the weight of red tape, shifting priorities, constant realignment, and frequent demands to do more with less.
Ultimately, Marc put the right people in place and the show will (unfortunately) go on without him. These kinds of decisions frequently accompany the types of shakeups in upper ranks that we’ve seen lately at Fiserv. Marc’s org got moved around so many times over his tenure at Fiserv, it was inevitable that he would land under someone who did not see his individual worth. However, doing this right before Forum when Marc was slated to speak was a fairly incompetent move and will only add to the growing client sentiment that Fiserv is unstable.