ceo

Updated 5:11 p.m. PST with Yahoo announcement. Updated 5:21, 6:19 p.m., and 6:57 p.m. PST with further detail.

Yahoo, under fierce financial pressure, has begun a search to replace company co-founder Jerry Yang as chief executive, the company said Monday.

"Jerry and the board have had an ongoing dialogue about succession timing, and we all agree that now is the right time to make the transition to a new CEO who can take the company to the next level," Chairman Roy Bostock said in a statement. "We are deeply grateful … Read more

Thank goodness. BusinessWeek's new 25 Most Influential People on the Web list is refreshingly free of blowhard bloggers, busty video babes, and those wacky people who don't seem to do anything except speak at conference after conference.

Most of the list, rather, consists of the really big guys: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, and News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, whose company acquired MySpace. Then there are legit Web pioneers like Digg founder Kevin Rose, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, and Craigslist founder Craig Newmark.

Because of the dominance of big names, it's a pretty unsurprising … Read more

Correction: This post misstated Andy Schuon's former title. He was CEO of Universal Music Group's International Music Feed.

MySpace employees are busy putting the finishing touches on the social network's upcoming music service, expected to launch later this month. One important chore, however, remains conspicuously incomplete.

MySpace Music is officially rudderless. A six-month search for a CEO has been unsuccessful and now, the service is expected to debut without a chief in place, say three music industry sources. MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe is in charge on an interim basis.

If the service is successful, meaning it offers … Read more

Updated August 21, 2008 at 11:02 AM PST with comments from Glassdoor's CEO.

Glassdoor.com uses an online questionnaire so employees can rate their companies and CEOs. I took the questionnaire. It's all the usual stuff, like what do you think of the leadership abilities and competence of senior management, would you recommend your company as a place to work, that sort of thing.

I thought it would be interesting to track the stock performance of the

public companies with CEOs that had the highest approval ratings versus those with the lowest approval ratings.

Guess what I found?

Over the past five years, shares of all the companies whose CEOs had the highest approval ratings were in the black, while shares of all the companies whose CEOs had the lowest approval ratings were either in the red or flat. We're talking 8 of 8 in the black, 8 of 8 in the red or flat.

What does that tell you?

First, that we live in America, the great land of greed and capitalism. If you're stock is in the money, the CEO's a god. If your options are under water, he's a dog. And don't flame me, it's what employees had to say, not me. But for what it's worth, I don't think that's a bad thing.… Read more

In baseball, you get three strikes and you're out. As for technology CEOs, that depends. It depends on the magnitude and visibility of their screw-ups, the aggressiveness of the board, all kinds of things.

Sometimes it just takes one event, if it's big and hairy enough. On the other hand, I've seen CEOs swing and miss dozens of times for years on end, and they're still in the game.

Let's take a look at five recent examples of CEOs getting canned and see what we come up with:

Patricia Russo of Alcatel Lucent. It came as no surprise when Alcatel Lucent announced on July 29 that CEO Russo would step down. She had a decent run at the helm of Lucent, but the 2006 merger with Alcatel has been a disaster for both companies. This is a great example of one huge, high-visibility strike doing a CEO in. Incidentally, Chairman Serge Tchuruk is out, as well.… Read more

The concept of corporate governance implies consistent and effective laws, methods, and metrics for governing our nation's public companies. The sad fact is that there is no such thing. It's a myth. Here's why:

People talk about the fiduciary responsibility of boards of directors. What that means, in plain speak, is that boards are supposed to:

1) Hire and fire the CEO and appoint other corporate officers 2) Compensate the CEO and other corporate officers 3) Oversee corporate strategy 4) Represent shareholders in the transparent and effective governance of the company

As an ex-officer of several public companies and as a consultant, I've been involved with lots of boards, executive staffs, investment banks, VCs, corporate attorneys, and the like. At least in my experience, boards don't operate the way they're supposed to.

Let's take the last point first. Shareholders are offered a slate of directors and a handful of issues to rubberstamp. That means they have two choices: accept or reject.

Now, let me ask you this. If your spouse or doctor says, "Here's my recommendation, take it or leave it," what do you do? That's right, you take it. Is it the best thing for you? Who the heck knows? You had a gun to your head so you nodded up and down.… Read more

Technology executives are notorious for their out-of-proportion egos and hot-headed tempers. Michael Dell, Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs-- even Andy Grove--are all members of a long list of distinguished high-tech executives who are famous for not suffering fools lightly, among other things.

But what happens when they're the fools? What happens when a high-powered executive has his head up his you-know-what and has lost all sense of objectivity? What happens when a gutsy employee speaks up? Well, in many cases he gets his head chopped off for his trouble. In shrink speak this is called transference, which in this case means unconsciously taking one's own feelings of inferiority and guilt out on another.

Given a choice, the vast majority of people would rather forgo the whole decapitation thing rather than declare that "the emperor (or should I say executive) has no clothes." Not surprisingly, this phenomenon is rampant in the technology industry.… Read more

Corporate fraud didn't start with Enron, Tyco, and WorldCom and it didn't end with them, either. Fraud is rampant in the technology industry. What most employees, investors, and consumers don't realize is how much it costs them.

Excuse me for stating the obvious, but you'd be surprised how many people think there's some magic pile of dough somewhere that pays for companies to comply with investigations, contest charges, and remedy issues. In fact, the costs are born primarily by the corporation. That means it comes right out of shareholders' and employees' pockets. Consumers also pay, albeit indirectly.

And yes, we're talking about costs that materially impact earnings, balance sheets, and cash flow. We're talking about internal and outside lawyers, accountants, consultants, crisis PR, D&O (directors and officers) insurance, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, exit packages, and even recruiting costs to replace executives.

Of course, the biggest cost is in terms of loss of market capitalization.… Read more

Occam's Razor essentially says that all things being equal, the simplest solution is the best. The principle has implications in virtually every field of science, not to mention philosophy, aesthetics, marketing, business, you name it.

If for some reason you don't buy the word of a 14th-century Franciscan friar, it might interest you to know that Albert Einstein also believed the universe loves simplicity. I don't know about you, but I'm in no position to argue with that guy.

You'd think that keeping things simple would be the easiest path, but that's not necessarily the case. Sometimes it's downright impossible. Look at the personal computer, for example. The need for backwards compatibility with legacy programs and interfaces has forever rendered the PC more complex than any of us would like.… Read more