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'I came in with a little bit of a bad attitude': Ex-PayPal CEO says he rejected Verizon job several times before ending retirement
Dan Schulman said he felt an obligation to help Verizon, which had been struggling to compete with rivals and losing market share for around 5 years.
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Dan Schulman, the chief executive officer of Verizon and former PayPal head, recently revealed that he turned down the offer to lead the telecommunications giant several times before agreeing to return to corporate life in October 2025. Schulman, who had retired in 2023 after nearly a decade at PayPal, was enjoying life on a Montana ranch with his wife, Summerly, and around 900 cattle when Verizon’s board approached him.
Speaking to Fortune on the latest episode of ‘Fortune 500: Titans and Disruptors of Industry’, Schulman said he initially had little interest in taking up another demanding CEO role. “I really didn’t want to come back into the CEO job. These jobs are all-consuming. You’re putting in 10 to 14 hours a day,” he said.
However, after repeated requests from Verizon’s board and encouragement from his wife, he eventually decided to lead the firm. Schulman said he felt an obligation to help the company, which had been struggling to compete with rivals and losing market share for around 5 years.
“I came in with a little bit of a bad attitude,” he said, recalling his initial approach to the role. A year later, however, Schulman said he was “absolutely loving it and pretty hopeful about our future.”
According to Fortune, Schulman had been associated with Verizon’s board since 2018 and became its lead independent director in December 2024. He was already familiar with the company’s difficulties and had been identified as a contingency option if anything happened to then-CEO Hans Vestberg.
He said that Verizon had fallen from being the industry leader by market capitalisation to the last position. Its longstanding reputation for having a superior wireless network was also no longer enough to prevent customers from switching to competitors.
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Verizon CEO cuts 13,000 jobs
After taking charge, Schulman moved quickly to address the company’s problems. At his first employee meeting, he described Verizon as a “big, lumbering giant that had fallen behind”, citing its hierarchical culture, slow decision-making and excessive internal processes.
In November 2025, weeks after his appointment, Verizon announced plans to cut more than 13,000 jobs, the largest round of layoffs in its history. Schulman said the cuts were intended to free up funds for reinvestment and demonstrate that the turnaround would involve serious changes.
“I needed to show this was different, that I was very serious about the change that was going to happen. Playing to win is not just a slogan for me or a nice marketing thing,” he said.
The strategy eventually worked, with Verizon adding 406,000 net postpaid phone lines in the third quarter of 2026, compared with 44,000 during the same period last year. Its promotional costs to acquire customers fell 41%, while free cash flow rose 12% to $7.8 billion.
According to Schulman, part of the shift came from breaking an industry habit of luring customers with free phones and promotional offers. “A free line is not really a net add from my perspective,” he said.
Still, he knows the turnaround is far from over. He expects the turnaround to take 3 years, with his contract extended through December 2028.
When asked how he’ll judge his tenure when he eventually hands Verizon to a successor, he pointed first to customer trust, then to pride inside a company many had written off as too big and too bureaucratic to change.
“We’re surprising a lot of people right now, and it feels good when that happens,” he said.
