“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.
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.
Someone else wrote my bio too, but I still looked at it and made corrections.
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
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.
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.
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
It’s a bit ironic, given that he is implementing cost-cutting at Yahoo (i.e. firing people).
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.
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 agree about the private company scenario. One reason the media is jumping all over this is because it’s a big well-known company.
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-addingconstructive arrogant.
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.
Some comments:
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.
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.
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.
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.
