Leave Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson Alone! 319
theodp writes "Over at The Daily Beast, Dan Lyons says Resumegate is overblown and says it's time to stop picking on Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson. Even without the circa-1979 CS degree some incorrectly thought he possessed, Lyons argues that Thompson is still perfectly capable, his critics have ulterior motives, and his competitors have all lied before. 'Forgive me for being less than shocked at the idea of a CEO lying,' writes Lyons. 'Steve Jobs [college dropout] used to lie all the time, and he's apparently the greatest CEO who ever lived. Google lied about taking money from Canadian pharmacies to run illegal drug ads, but finally had to come clean and pay $500 million in fines to settle the charges. Mark Zuckerberg [college dropout] last fall settled charges brought by the FTC that his company had made "unfair and deceptive" claims—I think that's like lying—and, what's more, had violated federal laws.' So what makes the fudging of a 30-year old accomplishment on the Yahoo CEO's resume a transgression that the 'highly ethical and honest folks in Silicon Valley' simply cannot bear? 'Facebook is a cool kid,' explains Lyons. 'So is Apple. Yahoo is the loser kid that nobody likes.'"
It's the hypocricy (Score:5, Insightful)
The assumption is that an employee who lied on his resume would likely be fired, but a CEO is too important to fire.
Unethical Culture, Bah (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess this means... (Score:5, Insightful)
They've just moved to the top of my list of potential employers! Did I mention that I created the Internet, the World Wide Web, and all the programming languages they use?
Do you want a leader who lies? (Score:5, Insightful)
When it comes to the people who are leading a division or organization, this becomes even more important. What kind of shady deals would these people be willing to make, what kind of precarious situations would they be willing to put the company in? If you lie to get into the company on the bottom rung, it becomes more and more difficult to correct those lies as you progress in your career and climb the corporate ladder. If you choose to go that route, you'd better switch companies once you've acquired some experience and start your new job without lies.
Re:It's the hypocricy (Score:5, Insightful)
The assumption is that an employee who lied on his resume would likely be fired, but a CEO is too important to fire.
The assumption is that an employee who lied on his/her resume would likely lie about other things as well. A CEO can lie about the most important information about their company. Lie to the board, the stockholders, the SEC, etc.
His CS degree isn't relevant to his current position, but the fact that he lied about it is relevant.
Lying about accomplishments disqualifies him (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a few things that lying about is completely unacceptable and disqualifies you as a member of civilized society. Education is the most important. All those that now protect Thompson do not seem to get it. My guess would be quite often due to a lack of education and in some cases certainly because they have done the same. If lying about degrees suddenly becomes acceptable, everybody will do it and degrees become meaningless. As degrees do not only provide the degree itself, but specific skills, knowledge and insights, if degrees become meaningless, incompetence in critical positions will raise.
The second thing is that lying about a degree speaks volumes about the personality and character of the person doing it. It speaks of somebody that claims to be something he is not. It speaks of ambition without skill. It makes it highly likely he lied and continues to lie in other regards and that he is a generally dishonest person, at least whenever he thinks he can get away with it.
As to the matter in detail, yes, even an old CS degree matters very much. It gives a different perspective on a number of things that have not changed at all. Details may have changed, but the fundamental issues are still the same, and this person does not have the skills to assess them. You cannot go from nothing to master just watching these things from the outside. You have to have hands-on experience and a CS degree provides that.
For these reasons, Thompson must step down and his career must be over. Otherwise we will get even more dishonest and incompetent (but power-hungry) people in comparable positions.
Re:Engineers depend on truth (Score:5, Insightful)
It also offends us greatly when somebody is claiming to be an engineer that really is not. It demeans us and means our skills are arbitrary and that anybody can claim them without verification and consequences. This cannot be allowed to stand.
Re:It's the hypocricy (Score:5, Insightful)
The standard here is that everybody is expected to respect common decency and have a reasonable level of personal integrity, regardless of CEO or the common worker. Claiming a degree violates both to the extreme. Degrees are things people trust. Claiming one without having one it a violation of the order of society. It also reflects massively and negatively on the character of the person doing it.
Hence lying about a degree disqualifies you as a member of decent society, must get you ass fired and your career to be over.
Or you can go the way of, for example, Northern Korea, where a nil-whit is called the "Genius of the Geniuses". Of course, _that_ guy is a figurehead.
Re:It's the hypocricy (Score:5, Insightful)
"Yes, the CEO is far more important to the company than the sandwich guy."
Therefore is far more important to get the facts right *prior* to hire somebody for that role, isn't it?
Well, by lying about his CV in order to get his position, his lie is far more important than the sandwich guy doing the same, isn't it?
Now, what was your point, again?
Re:It's the hypocricy (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, I truly doubt his supposed CS degree from 1979 ever ONCE came up in the board's discussion to hire him. It's entirely irrelevant to the job at hand. In all likelihood it was either taken straight from his bio on e-bay (which may or may not have come from him) or the 5th page of his resume that hadn't been updated in 20 years. It's not about him being CEO, it's about whether a degree even matters for a 50+ year old employee with a strong employment background. It doesn't.
Yes, a junior programmer who explicitly lied about his degree should get fired, because that would be a critical part of the decision to hire him. But an older employee gets hired based on a solid work history and his degree may never come into question. In that case, CEO or not, the employee would probably not get fired just for having a lie 5 pages deep in his resume.
Now if there was a background check form that had him write in his education history anew and sign a "this is true to my knowledge" statement, and he still put the degree on there, perhaps there's some basis for termination just for the explicit lie. But it's not at all clear that that exists. Personally, I think it's just as likely that e-bay doctored the bio at some point to make itself feel better about him, and yahoo simply copied that without much thought.
Re:1979 was pre-PC era (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an astonishingly ignorant thing to write. What part of CS is different now than from 1979? Has O(n) suddenly become equal to O(log n)?
Regardless, recent trends have been bringing computing back to the mainframe model. Computation started out concentrated on mainframes because computers were so expensive. Microcomputers pushed computation out to the edges. Cloud and webservices are swinging the pendulum back to a centralized model, but guess what? CS has been relevant and valid though that entire spectrum.
Whether or not CS is important to the CEO of Yahoo! is arguable. I think most people are concerned about Thompson's values, not his knowledge of balancing trees.
Re:Summary hole (Score:5, Insightful)
A little reality check I occasionally give to students: Outside of academia, the only people who will ever sincerely care what your major was in college (and especially your minor) are the people who hire you for your first job. At that point in your career, your major and the grades you got in those classes are all you have going for you, so it's the only basis they have for judging you. But when you apply for your second job, all they will care about was your performance at your current/previous job, and maybe what kind of grades you got in college. "You've got a BA in English Literature, but you've spent the last two years writing binary control code for moisture vaporators? Welcome to Hutt Engineering." Third job and onward: it's 100% about your work experience. So it isn't worth lying about, and it isn't worth the petty outrage over it.
Re:1979 was pre-PC era (Score:5, Insightful)
"This is an astonishingly ignorant thing to write."
If you hadn't noticed, Slashdot is dominated by IT types who may be excellent sysadmins or even good software engineers, but have very little idea what computer science is.
Re:It's the hypocricy (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, a junior programmer who explicitly lied about his degree should get fired, because that would be a critical part of the decision to hire him.
Same goes for the CEO. A critical part of the decision to hire him was that he made the best effort to give correct information to the Board of Directors. Even if it were truly irrelevant that the CEO had a technical degree (which I doubt), you still have the issue of lying to your employer which is routinely grounds for dismissal.
But let's suppose your view of things is correct, that the CEO didn't lie to the Board, and that this person merely uses a fraudulent biography for their public face at the company. It's still a remarkable lack of professionalism and display of poor judgment.
Re:It's the hypocricy (Score:4, Insightful)
The issue I have with this is that he likely has had that degree listed on his resume for a very long time. From the very beginning, when he first placed it there, he was using that lie to help him get to where he is today. While he currently does not need the degree to do his job adequately (unlike, say, a degree in engineering), there probably was a time in one of his prior jobs where that degree was required or highly useful for him to be considered for a position.
In other words, he used this lie to get to this point in his career. This is not a one-time thing.
Re:It's the hypocricy (Score:5, Insightful)
More like by lying he's secured himself an opportunity that never would have been given him otherwise.
It's a messed up society when you can get further by lying and cheating than you can by playing it straight.
Re:It's the hypocricy (Score:5, Insightful)
Acceptance my ass.
Getting away with things that one of lower social status would get the book thrown at him for is simply one of the perks of being part of the elite.
We don't embrace it, we just grudgingly tolerate it because we have no choice.
Re:It's the hypocricy (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, I truly doubt his supposed CS degree from 1979 ever ONCE came up in the board's discussion to hire him.
I bet it did, albeit in passing: "oh, look: he has a degree in CompSci. That'd give us a little cred with other tech companies."
It's not about him being CEO, it's about whether a degree even matters for a 50+ year old employee with a strong employment background.
It doesn't. Therefore, he shouldn't have included it as a reason why they should hire him.
But on a practical level, I despise that I'm competing for jobs with liars. My resume is probably a lot shorter than his, but it's completely accurate. I did the things I listed. I earned the degree I put on there. I'd hate to think that my resume - my summary description of why a company would want to hire me - is competing with another guy's which is sprinkled with lies that make him look like a better candidate.
I guess I see it the same way as professional athlete who doesn't want to compete with steroid-fueled monstrosities. I want to get ahead by my own merits, but how am I supposed to go up against people who don't play by the rules? Given the choice between outing them to level the playing field or having to stoop to their level, I'd much rather start enforcing those rules.
So fire him. He lied to get to where he is. Maybe that particular lie wasn't the make-or-break that got him the job over someone else who wanted it, but it was important enough to him that he included it.
Re:It's the hypocricy (Score:4, Insightful)
So what makes the fudging of a 30-year old accomplishment on the Yahoo CEO's resume a transgression...?
2 wrongs don't make a right? The continuing saga of US CEOs ripping off the public? The fact that a senior executive might be good, but that doesn't excuse immorality and in fact makes it much more likely that they'll screw 'consumers/customers/stakeholders' along the way. There's many reasons, they should all be called on it unless you like more ENRON style failures.
Re:It's the hypocricy (Score:4, Insightful)
I am trying to understand the concept of why you would wait for a know liar to lie to you before no longer trusting them.
This whole corporate public relations yarn that it is acceptable to lie as long as it makes money, regardless of the other consequences of the lie ie, other people lose money, other people get sick, other people die, face is just crap.
People have an expectation of not being lied to by every single person they meet and, in fact of not being lied to as standard business practice by modern corporations even though, that is exactly was is happen all PR=B$ upped by mass media as somehow being acceptable.
Enough is enough, corporations and their executives get caught out and they will be mocked, ridiculed and derided , it will be harsh and, extended because hint, hint everyone is sick of it being standard 'modus operandi' for corporations.