“In a filing with the SEC on April 27, Yahoo said Thompson has a Bachelor’s degree in accounting and computer science from Stonehill College in Easton, Mass. But, as it turns out, he actually only has an accounting degree.”
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2403985,00.asp
What? Why would he even bother lying about this?
And from a no-name school too. But apparently he’s been lying about it for years and years already, but no company he ever worked for caught it until now.
Hope. It is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and greatest weakness.
Looks like another ohai thread classic. Seriously dude, do us a favor and stop making threads.
I’m friends with one of his ex-EA’s. Believe it or not it’s highly likely that someone else wrote his bio besides himself. A marketing person probably.
~~~~~Live. Laugh. Love.~~~~~
Someone else wrote my bio too, but I still looked at it and made corrections.
You can fondle the cube, but it will not respond.
Another Blake troll-esque reply. The guy’s bio never changed as it followed him from company to company.. gee.. I guess all the marketing people at these different companies must have all magically decided to add a degree he never had to his bio
Hope. It is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and greatest weakness.
Studying With
if he “just” had a BA from Harvard or something.. no one would care… but STONEHILL??
his resume should have been screened by the HR department straight to the trash.. lol
Good example of a slippery slope.
Maybe he lied about having a dual degree at age 23 to land an entry-level programming job.
Then figured it would be safer to keep up the ruse, than to draw attention to the lie by correcting it.
What’s he going to say to get his bio corrected without raising suspicion?…
“Uhhh… could you remove the reference to me having a CS degree… that’s… ummm… no longer true.”
I declare Blake the most connected AF dude ever. From San Francisco 49ers’ QB Alex Smith and his beautiful wife to Yahoo CEO’s closest circle. He can pull a string or two, so we better not piss him off.
Yeah, I suspect that was the case. It is kind of ironic, since he has actually had a successful career so far. He probably had the talent to succeed even without putting fake credentials on his resume.
“I’m a CPA! I got money b***h!”
It shows that none of the companies he worked for actually went to verify with his college. It’s literally a 3 minute phone call. That’s actually disturbing.
Will community college kids start putting MIT on their resumes? Because apparently it could land you a job at Yahoo, ebay, or paypal.
Hope. It is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and greatest weakness.
Yahoo CEO apologizes, but doesn’t comment on how or why it happened.
“I want you to know how deeply I regret how this issue has affected the company and all of you,” Thompson said in a memo obtained by CNN. “We have all been working very hard to move the company forward, and this has had the opposite effect. For that, I take full responsibility, and I want to apologize to you.”
At his position, it doesn’t matter if he actually got a CS degree or not, but he should still be fired.
His earlier jobs after graduation may have been obtained because of this lie, so it’s like a chain reaction that ultimately landed him CEO at Yahoo. If he started off honest, he may not be where he is now
Hope. It is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and greatest weakness.
It’s a bit ironic, given that he is implementing cost-cutting at Yahoo (i.e. firing people).
“I’m a CPA! I got money b***h!”
I forget his name, but there is an investor that specifically goes through the management bios of every publicly traded company and tries to verify their credentials, and then outs the liars. Apparently he’s either no longer doing that or hadn’t gotten to Yahoo. But anyway, he exposed some pretty epic falsifications in his day – I think it’s probably in the 1% range, but some people do just straight up lie about what they have done.
Yahoo CEO will get canned. He’s trying to dodge it, but Loeb has his finger on a pressure point now and knows how to work the media. Dude is done, it’s just a matter of time. You can’t have a turn around when the CEO has no credibility. This will bleed for a while and then he will get fired.
“I lost my wife to a margin call. Wives get mad when you come home and say, ‘Sweetheart, I lost the house today.’” - Dennis Gartman on trading mistakes
See, I agree that there’s a good chance he will get fired. I don’t understand why he didn’t find a way to descretely get rid of that liability on his resume along the way somewhere. However, if it were a private company and I felt the guy I had really was the right guy for the job I would probably be willing to overlook this.
I used to smoke pot and go to class.
Sneak in ten minutes late with a bullsh*t excuse.
Slink down low at my desk.
Pray to god nobody asked me any questions.
I was the best teacher ever.
^ I agree about the private company scenario. One reason the media is jumping all over this is because it’s a big well-known company.
Hope. It is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and greatest weakness.
find this despicable….he should be fired……would they like it if someone applying for a job there (no one nowadays but still) lied on their resume?
Oh look, Blake is here with something to say. I’m sure this will be
informativevalue-addingconstructivearrogant.Not sure if you’re thinking of David Webb, but he’s outed tons of asian company execs as having diploma mills or non-existant degrees on their resume. Here is a list of some of them.
^Frank, where I disagree is from a practical perspective, individuals with the skills and vision to be a good CEO are not a dime a dozen (arguably, but this is my premise). I don’t think it’s a valid arguments to say “would they like it if _______”. This decision should be made on $$ and not just because the world should be fair. It’s not news that higher ups can get away with behavior a new hire can’t because of their position and because they intrinsically have more value to the company. If you feel this new information changes your opinion of the character and capabilities of the individual to the point where you no longer think he’s the best candidate, then yes, he should be fired. Shareholder value ultimately comes first. If his track record and not his degree was his driver for being hired and you think his character is still good minus this exception, then firing him to send a message is cutting off your nose to spite your face.
I used to smoke pot and go to class.
Sneak in ten minutes late with a bullsh*t excuse.
Slink down low at my desk.
Pray to god nobody asked me any questions.
I was the best teacher ever.
Some comments:
1) He didn’t get the job as CEO because of his undergrad degree. He got the job because he led a business unit at Paypal.
2) The woman who resigned on the board who recommended him. How is it her fault? Is she responsible for the background check? No. Do you know the degrees of your colleages. I don’t. Would you know if they were embellished? No.
3) Sounds to me like HR dropped the ball on this. Every company has a protocall when an employee is hired
I don’t see firing ST. I don’t see how this would be good for the business. I also don’t see how this would solve “the problem.” Is there evidence that shows Scott Thompson provided the bio to Yahoo? Or did someone from Public Relations @ Yahoo just cut and paste his bio from Paypal. Once again, I doubt ST wrote the bio originally and he probably hasn’t looked at it in years if ever. If this was a criminal case, I don’t see how there is evidence that proves without a reasonable doubt that he maliciously provided a false bio. Too many questions that aren’t answered and haven’t been raised.
~~~~~Live. Laugh. Love.~~~~~
I agree with this in principle, but the caveat is that at some point you are in such a highly public role that any misconduct cannot be tolerated because it will create an overhang on the stock and actually be counter productive to shareholder value realization. It’s not hard to argue that being CEO of Yahoo is such a case. At some point, you rise far enough that you can no longer tolerate any poor behavior, and this is why you have prominent execs stepping down after being caught for affairs, etc. If you’re running a $100mm market cap company – fine. But not at this level. This guy’s goose is cooked, it’s just a matter of time.
“I lost my wife to a margin call. Wives get mad when you come home and say, ‘Sweetheart, I lost the house today.’” - Dennis Gartman on trading mistakes
Time to hit the gym, lose 20 lbs, and maybe get a new wardrobe fatty?
http://i.imgur.com/FELdzh.jpg
~~~~~Live. Laugh. Love.~~~~~
Yeah, it’s sort of different when you are in a public role. You need to convince directors to do vote for things, motivate employees, and project a positive image to shareholders. If everyone thinks you are a scumbag, it’s hard to do any of this.
“I’m a CPA! I got money b***h!”
I was joking that I was the kid in the car. I’m not in that photo. But great effort there, sport.
Pretty
toughinsightfulnon-ironicchildish words for someone hiding behind annoymity.I used to smoke pot and go to class.
Sneak in ten minutes late with a bullsh*t excuse.
Slink down low at my desk.
Pray to god nobody asked me any questions.
I was the best teacher ever.
I knew you’d come up with some kind of BS argument.
Yahoo’s 10K literally has his “CS degree” listed in their filings, which as CEO he had to personally attest to its contents as accurate, right above his own signature.. and he hasn’t noticed the error after several years of it.
The CFAI curriculum literally has this exact scenario in its ethics section. Even if it’s not a error made by him, it’s been going on so long that he should have know. and thus: violation.
Hope. It is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and greatest weakness.
Studying With
^^^Yeah, but I doubt he signs the 10K. He probably just has somebody in HR do it. I mean seriously, there are way more important things for him to do than write his bio or sign some form. When you’re controlling the strategic direction of the a company that size, you don’t have a lot of time for trivial tasks. Totally not his fault. Somebody’s head should roll, but it shouldn’t be his. One time I saw my bio with the wrong school on it because marketing f’d up…better believe I didn’t take the fall on that one.
“Some people make shoes. Some people make houses. We make money and people are willing pay us a lot to make money for them.”
i have committed sinful acts in the past and i’m sure many of you have as well. The least he can do is come clean and explain what happened. the fact that did not occur is bad.
morale at the company is also going to be down. imagine the horseplay that is going to happen now “why not just lie our CEO did”….a CEO is not perfect, but he/she should exemplify honesty and leadership. most importantly, they must correct their faults and acknowledge them.
finally, CEOs are a dime a dozen. by the money they’re paying c’mon…..
Actually, this is wrong. After the Enron and Worldcom scandals, CEOs have been required to personally sign the company’s public documents and are held liable for factually incorrect contents. He certainly would have a team that vets this document, but it’s his name on the page, and the way the law works, he is liable for all contents. I believe shareholders could sue for this type of misinformation.
“I lost my wife to a margin call. Wives get mad when you come home and say, ‘Sweetheart, I lost the house today.’” - Dennis Gartman on trading mistakes
What you do not seem to understand is the CFAI is a private organization. They can do whatever they want if it falls within US law. Scott Thompson is not a member of the CFAI thus has no obligation to the organization. You would have to be a member to be in violation of their little bylaws.
As I have said, if it can be proven that:
1) Scott Thompson wrote the bio originally
2) Scott Thompson provided the bio to Paypal
Then he should be held accountable. At this point no evidence suggests that he did either. All Loeb has been able to state is ST’s bio is incorrect.
If any of you are following the US Senate race with Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren EW claims she is a minority and has been checking off the minority box for years. She is as white as snow. It can be argued that that is how she got her job at Harvard Law School. She is not Cherokee as she claims. Harvard is not going to sanction her nor is anything going to come out of this. Seems like a similar situation.
All of you armchair attorneys need to understand the difference between morals, ethics, and LAW. It can not be proven that ST broke any laws. Maybe unethical behavior has transpired but it has yet to be proven.
~~~~~Live. Laugh. Love.~~~~~
Breaking a law is not required to fire a CEO. Jerry and Carol were both asked to leave because they were inadequate in their jobs, not because they broke any laws.
“I’m a CPA! I got money b***h!”
so the CEO doesn’t check his own resume?…..lies..
…CEO is a liar, and the board is incompetent…..this is why Yahoo sucks as a company.
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