Dan Schulman on Taking Over Verizon: AI Layoffs, Krav Maga Strategy, and Punching Back

Dan Schulman, the former PayPal CEO who initially turned down the Verizon job twice, has returned to the telecom world with the urgency of a Krav Maga fighter. He inherited a $200 billion company in crisis: five years of lost market share, dropping customer satisfaction scores, rising churn, and a buttoned-up culture that prioritized process over winning. "We're not going to be a punching bag anymore," he declared, and he's backing that up with action. Verizon just posted its second strong earnings report under his leadership, stock is up 16% since October (outpacing rivals and the market), and the company signed unexpected numbers of new wireless subscribers.

To catalyze change, Schulman has orchestrated the largest layoff in Verizon's history—13,000 people out of roughly 100,000—and launched 10 AI-powered transformation initiatives he monitors weekly. Rather than hide the pain, he's been transparent: unemployment could hit 20-30% in two to five years as AI and robots automate jobs, and people without AI skills will suffer. His answer isn't just cost-cutting theater. He's set aside $20 million for a reskilling and career transition fund for laid-off employees and is publicly urging other Fortune 100 CEOs to do the same, framing it as a capitalist imperative: mass unemployment is bad for business, democracy, and the economy.

Schulman's philosophy rests on a deceptively simple insight from his years practicing Krav Maga: if you stand still in a fight, you get hit. Applied to business, it means external change must always outpace internal change, or you're already falling behind. He admits the pace of change is now so ferocious that CEOs can't claim to know the future—"you'll be proven to be a liar in, like, a year." His solution is radical candor about uncertainty paired with a "bias towards action." A quick wrong decision you correct beats months spent perfecting the wrong call. Leadership's job is to both define reality (employees know when their CEO gets it) and inspire hope by painting a vision they can actually reach. He's planning to have a "different company in place" by year three, having shifted the culture from risk-averse bureaucracy to competitive urgency.