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Eric Schmidt: On April 4th I Will Step Down, Larry Page to be CEO

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51–60 of 160 posts

Re: Eric Schmidt: On April 4th I Will Step Down, Larry Page to be CEO

#52
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What decisions made by Eric Schmidt would you consider "bad"?

Leading a decade of mediocre home-grown products (save for Gmail)? EDIT: Name one hit Google product Schmidt oversaw (again, save for Gmail) that wasn't an acquisition. This is supposed to be a company of innovation. EDIT 2: I regret the use of mediocre. I'm sure the technology, like everything that comes out of Google, was top notch. Certain products though, like Buzz, Wave, and TV, and the bizarrely bifurcated-from…

Google Reader?

Re: Eric Schmidt: On April 4th I Will Step Down, Larry Page to be CEO

#53
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except when they don't... Angelo Mozilo, Bernie Ebbers and Ken Lay (among many others) come to mind.

Bravo on conjuring a list of relevant counterexamples. Surely boards on product companies will look to the Enron scandal when assessing whether a founder has the competence or vision to lead a company.

They are criminally liable to do the due diligence assessments to make sure the books aren't being cooked, so yes I would hope at minimum the board is actively trying to prevent an Enron.

Re: Eric Schmidt: On April 4th I Will Step Down, Larry Page to be CEO

#56
post #48

> Sergey['s]....title will be Co-Founder. I can just imagine the conversation. "So, Sergey, you're okay with Larry taking the CEO title, what will yours be?" "You can call me 'Co-Founder', bitch"

If I were Sergey, I'd make sure that my title was just "Sergey".

Re: Eric Schmidt: On April 4th I Will Step Down, Larry Page to be CEO

#58
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bravo on conjuring a list of relevant counterexamples. Surely boards on product companies will look to the Enron scandal when assessing whether a founder has the competence or vision to lead a company.

They are criminally liable to do the due diligence assessments to make sure the books aren't being cooked, so yes I would hope at minimum the board is actively trying to prevent an Enron.

No, what was pertinent to the discussion was whether vision outweighs direct experience in this industry, which is not entirely obvious. I would say that vision is a trait that is generalizable to technology startup founders. Your counterexamples reference accounting fraud, the proclivity of which is not tied or correlated in a significant way to being a founder. A valid counterexample would reference the need for experience trumping vision in a startup founder's performance as CEO.

Re: Eric Schmidt: On April 4th I Will Step Down, Larry Page to be CEO

#59
post #2

I wonder how much of this is due to some of the bad decisions Eric Schmidt has made with google.

Eric Schmidt has been CEO of google for ten years. In that time it's gone from (maybe) a $200 million company to a $200 billion company. I think any bad decisions he might have made along the way can be forgiven.
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