61–70 of 160 posts
Sometimes people switch out from being CEO to being chairman because it's just more fun being the globe-trotting-jet-setting-lunching-with-Obama guy schmoozing and closing deals and partnerships than being the tedious micromanager. Just saying. But it's also fun to fantasize, speculate, and gossip about really rich and important people.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ex…
> 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".
Tried and true: founders make terrific CEOs. EDIT, Context being tech: Hastings, Ellison, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Jobs, Gates. I'd say Google was a company in the spirit of these before WorldCom, Enron and Countrywide Financial.
Except when they don't... Angelo Mozilo, Bernie Ebbers and Ken Lay (among many others) come to mind.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I were Sergey, I'd make sure that my title was just "Sergey".
I just think it's funny that they probably wanted Sergey to pick a standard big company management title for the press release, like "President of Products" or similar. He went with "Co-Founder".
"Co-founder" makes it clear what his position is: power without any official duties. Pretty sweet deal.
I guess Google is going to be more focused on PR (and lobbying) and will be way more aggressive than ever before - in simple lingo , they wont take anymore bullshit (from all sort of heavy weight and nasty competitors) and even more than that they will stop them even before they think to do anything against google ... Don't be Evil to Customers and Shareholders !!! But be as Evil as possible if (and Only if) someone…
Found a company and become it's CEO.
When it's time for the company to "grow up", bring in a well respected CEO who can structure the company for growth and stability while teaching the young founder.
When the founder has learned the ropes he takes over again as CEO.
I just can't picture Larry as CEO of one of the largest corporations in the world, I'm frankly surprised he'd want this!
Me neither. He's obviously amazingly talented, however, he has always struck me as shy/inarticulate/"slow" Watch this talk he gave a couple years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFb2rvmrahc Doesn't strike me as CEO material, especially for a company like Google.
Good link in other respects too: an insightful look into his priorities, motivations, and thinking patterns. The insight and ideas that he inherited from his father are particularly interesting, and worthwhile. While visions of a better world over the long term have to be tempered by present promises to shareholders, I think it's important to be able to articulate the purpose and goals of a firm beyond simply maximizing quarterly growth.
On a related note, here's a 2001 Charlie Rose interview where Larry Page & Sergey Brin discuss what it's like to run a search engine that handles 100m queries per day, and more importantly why they had just brought Eric Schmidt on board. http://www.charlierose.com/view/content/3017