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Yahoo CEO might have lied about having CS degree

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Re: Yahoo CEO might have lied about having CS degree

#41

Post by cube13 »

jrockway wrote: post #34
MartinCron wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lying on your resume should get you fired. Lying on SEC filings should get you imprisoned.

Lying on SEC filings should get you imprisoned. This costs me a lot of money, and I don't want to give free money to people just because they are dishonest. Ban the guy from being the CEO or a board member of a publicly traded company for 10 years. Inexpensive and an appropriate punishment for the crime. Let's reserve prison for people that absolutely cannot integrate with normal society.

Just fine the equivalent of their combined earnings(salary, bonus, and any stock options) for the years that they lied on SEC forms. The people don't have to spend money in taxes imprisoning them, and it provides enough deterrence to just not do it.

Re: Yahoo CEO might have lied about having CS degree

#42

Post by zeteo »

smoody wrote: post #25

Sort-of off topic: That guy has nothing on some of the other infamous CEO career lies... take the ex-CEO of Lotus (former makers of 123, Lotus Notes, etc). He lied about being a fighter pilot, having a PhD, and being a black belt in tae kwon do. source: http://www.zdnet.com/news/background-of-lotus-chief-under-fi... I think people get to a point where they start to believe their made-up mythology. Or perhaps they rea…

Makes you wonder about the evolutionary pressures at the top of the corporate food chain, doesn't it?

Re: Yahoo CEO might have lied about having CS degree

#43

Post by kenrikm »

gkoberger wrote: post #14
klbarry wrote: post #9

This opinion is from someone who's been in charge of hiring a few times and will likely do so again: If you can actually do the job described, I don't give a damn about your credentials. I would not fire an employee who I found out fabricated credentials, if they had been working well for a while.

I was with you right up until the last sentence. I have no problem with people being hired if they're skilled yet don't have a degree. However, lying about it shows a lack of integrity. I wouldn't want that person working for me.

Exactly, it's the lie that's bad. If he had not added on CS most likely he still would have gotten the job. I would bet he was just keeping up a lie he started earlier in his career.

Re: Yahoo CEO might have lied about having CS degree

#44

Post by brudgers »

smoody wrote: post #25

Sort-of off topic: That guy has nothing on some of the other infamous CEO career lies... take the ex-CEO of Lotus (former makers of 123, Lotus Notes, etc). He lied about being a fighter pilot, having a PhD, and being a black belt in tae kwon do. source: http://www.zdnet.com/news/background-of-lotus-chief-under-fi... I think people get to a point where they start to believe their made-up mythology. Or perhaps they rea…

You always were one of my favorite students.

Re: Yahoo CEO might have lied about having CS degree

#45

Post by thematt »

maeon3 wrote: post #23

His pay package for yahoo is 27 million dollars, i wonder how much of that he will keep after he gets the pink slip? Probably more than I'll ever earn in 5 of my lifetimes. It doesn't seem fair. But I guess demand for ceo's is high and quality ceo's are scarce.

Stranger things have happened, but I'm not sure a golden parachute would deploy if he's indicted by the SEC.

Re: Yahoo CEO might have lied about having CS degree

#46

Post by csallen »

tomkarlo wrote: post #26

The issue here is not whether or not he's qualified for the CEO spot. It's whether he has been signing off on SEC filings that he knows contain falsehoods. In particular, there's information in the proxy statements that shareholders are supposed to use as the basis of their voting and their support for executive compensation. If he's lying about this, how are shareholders supposed to trust the rest of the SEC filings…

> If he's lying about this, how are shareholders supposed to trust the rest of the SEC filings he signs off on as CEO?

I'm not sure how I feel about statements like this. On the one hand, yes, you probably do not want such a brazen liar leading your company. But on the other hand, we as a society tend to believe in a dangerously inaccurate theory of character. Namely, that people are either inherently moral or they aren't. Liars or truth-tellers. Good or evil.

In reality, life isn't so simple. Studies have shown that when people are faced with moral dilemmas, situational factors play a larger role than "character". Obviously we all know people who are relatively upstanding. But when it comes down to it, it's not that difficult to put them into a situation where they'll be willing to lie, cheat, or steal. You just need the right combination environmental factors, and they don't even have to be that extreme. It's basic stuff like incentives (which in the CEO world includes million dollar bonuses), chances of getting caught, harshness of punishment, etc.

Long-story short, if we really care about improving behavior, we should stop looking for signals of "trustworthiness". Instead, we should just assume that everyone is capable of lying, whether they've been caught lying before or not. And we should engineer a system that removes incentives for cheating + makes it more difficult to do so.

Re: Yahoo CEO might have lied about having CS degree

#47

Post by vijayr »

sliverstorm wrote: post #40
tomkarlo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, the head of admissions at MIT: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-04-26-mit-admiss... No question she was good at her job, but it's a real problem when you're in charge of any kind of hiring to ask your applicants to be honest if you're not honest yourself.

Maybe it isn't a problem, but actually something that makes her good at her job? I'd trust a long-time liar to recognize other liars better than an honest person, any day.

by that logic, may be we should hire ex-cons for law enforcement? they'd probably make better cops than 'normal' people?

Re: Yahoo CEO might have lied about having CS degree

#49

Post by kscaldef »

felipemnoa wrote: post #33
vlad wrote: post #27

I have a B.S. in Computer Science and B.S. in Mathematics (a double degree). Had I taken fewer courses, I could have had a combined B.S. Computer Science and Mathematics (a double major). I haven't seen a double degree like mine very often, but I have seen the latter form on a LinkedIn profile where Googling for his name returned a university web site showing that the person actually had a minor, not a second major,…

>>I have a B.S. in Computer Science and B.S. in Mathematics (a double degree). Had I taken fewer courses, I could have had a combined B.S. Computer Science and Mathematics (a double major). What is the difference between having them separate as opposed to saying it was a double major? You still have to meet the same requirements don't you?

My double degree required completing 150 credits, rather than 120 credits for a single degree with double major (the equivalent of an addition year of courses). I can't recall at this point if there were any additional course requirements, but I don't think there were.

Re: Yahoo CEO might have lied about having CS degree

#50

Post by [deleted] »

jrockway wrote: post #34
MartinCron wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lying on your resume should get you fired. Lying on SEC filings should get you imprisoned.

Lying on SEC filings should get you imprisoned. This costs me a lot of money, and I don't want to give free money to people just because they are dishonest. Ban the guy from being the CEO or a board member of a publicly traded company for 10 years. Inexpensive and an appropriate punishment for the crime. Let's reserve prison for people that absolutely cannot integrate with normal society.

[deleted]
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