U.S. companies each year can sponsor a total of 65,000 foreigners with at least a bachelor’s degree for an H-1B visa. The program allocates an additional 20,000 visas each year to foreign nationals with advanced degrees from U.S. universities.

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While it may be true for the purposes of the law, politics and human rights, it’s sadly not true of programmers. Some are more skilled than others, while those others may specialize in things that make them peculiarly suited to a particular job.

The problem comes when it’s time to evaluate a person for a specific job. On paper they may claim to have certain skills, but when the rubber meets the road, can they really carry off the job at hand? Wouldn’t it be great if you could vet someone not by word of mouth, but by evaluating the code they’ve written in the past?

That’s the idea behind Gild, which I first wrote about over the summer when it was just getting out of the starting blocks.

Today Gild will announce that it has landed an $8 million series A round of venture capital funding led by Steve Anderson of Baseline Ventures. Prior investors in Gild’s seed round also participated. They include SAP Ventures, Globespan Capital Partners and investor Mark Kvamme, best known for his early stake in LinkedIn.

Gild has created a cloud-based service that tracks the code that developers share publicly on services like GitHub and Google Code. It monitors how often that person’s code is accepted for open source projects, and how often other developers borrow from their code or “fork” it, which is a sign that other developers like what they see.

The result is that the programmers with the prestigious academic degrees may or may not be the ones you’re looking for, but it’s hard to know for sure until you’ve seen the code they’ve published. Software development becomes more of a meritocracy.

“Everyone is under pressure to find the best people,” Desai told me. “Those companies that hire based on pedigree and people from the best schools, we know that’s not working any more. They’re missing out on a lot of talented people.”

The company has been growing fast, and has seen its overall user base grow by 900 percent. Its customers include Box, Red Hat , Rackspace, Zynga and Square.

Gild has also been on a hiring tear: Jill Erickson, a former senior VP at advertising agency TMP Worldwide, joined as chief revenue officer in November. In December, Vivienne Ming, a Carnegie Mellon PhD and former research fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Mind, Brain and Computation, joined as chief data scientist.

The Bay Area-based start-up has raised $35 million from existing investor Alfred Lin of Sequoia Capital, and a new group of investors that include Yammer founder David Sacks, Kleiner Perkins’s Mary Meeker, NEA and GGV capital. The funds come just about a year after the company raised $11.6 million in a Series B round.

Houzz co-founder Adi Tatarko says the company plans to put most of the money toward hiring.

Houzz, in case you’re not familiar with the site, is like home porn for those looking for decoration inspiration, or for people who like to build Houzz “ideabooks” and fantasize about one day moving out of a cramped New York City apartment to a place you can actually paint … not that that’s from experience.

It also acts as a marketplace for connecting homeowners with designers and contractors who have posted their own portfolios and compete for jobs. (For a glimpse of the house that inspired Houzz, check out this story.)

In fact, in addition to the funding announcement today, Houzz is formally rolling out a premium service for contractors, called Pro+, where professionals can pay to have their services better marketed on the website.

Houzz claims it has over 160,000 professionals that interact regularly with Houzz consumers, of which there are around 11 million. Currently Houzz is available in most metro areas in the U.S. and Canada, but has been slowly expanding to other parts of the world.

Last month, Houzz released an Android app as well as some interesting statistics about the growth seen on mobile. Year over year, the company saw a 400 percent increase in mobile downloads, topping 5 million, with the majority of mobile activity occurring on iPads. Also, seems I’m not alone in my fantasy home-browsing: Houzz has said 9 o’clock at night is the peak time for Houzz mobile usage.

Sitting in front of a spectacular view of San Francisco at his home this afternoon, former Square COO Keith Rabois looks spent.

He is just recovering from a bout of pneumonia, which would be bad enough, but it’s clear from his tense and unusually — for him — disheveled appearance that the sexual harassment claim made by a current male employee at the San Francisco payments startup has taken its toll on the typically hard-charging exec who is not known for suffering fools.

But, now, given a judgement he made to continue in a personal and physical relationship with that unnamed junior staffer after he was hired at Square, Rabois feels both foolish and also angry.

“At the end of the day, this is personally embarrassing to me, because when anyone’s life is exposed to a public forum, it creates quite a damaging situation,” said Rabois. “As we looked at it, it was going to become a distraction that was going to hurt the company.”

It appears as if he wanted to stay — he shrugs when directly asked about it, though he will not say so explicitly. But, Rabois finally agreed with Square’s top management, including CEO and founder Jack Dorsey, that is was better that he leave.

“It was very clear once this outrageous demand was made, instead of building great products, it would be all about that,” he said.

That said, after an internal investigation, the company is backing him in the expected filing of a lawsuit from the employee, who has threatened a panoply of explosive allegations against him and the company that Rabois said again are a “fiction.”

He declined to show me any texts or emails between the two, but did recount the relationship in a blog post on Tumblr earlier today.

Richard Curiale, outside counsel for Square and also Rabois, said that the company had been approached about two weeks ago by New York lawyer Steven Berger, claiming the company knew of and did nothing to stop sexual harassment by Rabois and demanding a multi-million dollar settlement.

Curiale said he found no evidence in his investigation so far of anything except a “welcome” relationship that ended. He had even agreed to make Rabois available for a deposition with Berger, but the offer was refused.

I have an email into Berger for comment, which has thus far been unanswered. But Square has said it will fight any lawsuit filed and is currently supporting Rabois.

“I have not as yet found any conduct that is illegal and therefore there is no adverse relationship between Keith and Square,” said Curiale. “We don’t pay for claims that have no merit to them, because it amounts to extortion.”

Perhaps so, but it also amounts to a very juicy story — the second such major blowup in Silicon Valley in a year. The other — now a lawsuit alleging gender discrimination and retaliation, and a countersuit — between the well-known venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins, and former partner Ellen Pao, is ongoing.

The particulars of the Rabois situation, per his side of the story, which he claims is supported by much evidence, is of a social and physical relationship with a man he met several years ago.

While he would not call their relationship dating, it was close and personal, including taking this man out with him to social events.

The problem came when he recommended this man for a job at Square and he was hired. The company was much smaller then, about 30 people, but as it grew Rabois insists he had no direct oversight of the employee and also did not treat him differently from others he managed at the company.

Rabois claims he gave him advice, as he did other employees, but neither helped or hindered the man in his efforts to advance.

The man and Rabois were still seeing each other socially until December, when the relationship cooled.

And then came the lawsuit threat two weeks ago, which Rabois said “stunned” him.

Square says that it was not aware of the personal relationship until the threat of the lawsuit; the employee has never made any complaints about Rabois to management.

Spokesman Ricardo Reyes said that “what we have here at most is bad judgement and we will defend ourselves.”

In this Rabois agrees, as he fields emails of support from his wide range of friends and colleagues in tech, where he is well known as an entrepreneur and angel investor.

“I have several good ideas of what I want to do next,” he said.

Here’s one of them: The Trade Desk, a three-year-old ad buying platform that is staffing up as its sales boom. The company, which expanded from 17 to 40 people in the last year, has hired Rob Perdue as its first chief operating officer.

Perdue’s last job was at digital ad shop EyeWonder, where he managed 320 people; he also helped broker the company’s sale to MediaMind in 2011.

Trade Desk CEO Jeff Green says his company has seen revenue jump 1200 percent in the last year, and had hit a run rate of about $100 million at the end of 2012. Trade Desk is one of the partners powering Facebook’s ad exchange, and Green says his shop is already profitable.

(Shutterstock/Everett Collection)

The three new vice presidents being announced today are tasked with helping the payments company change the way consumers pay for things online, on their phones and at the register.

“In years past, we’ve grown too conservatively,” said PayPal’s CTO James Barrese. “We are reinventing ourselves with a cadre of new talent. I’m completely reinventing the organization, so that the top technologists can have a huge impact on where we are going.”

The three hires are:

Arnold Goldberg, VP of Customer Experience Engineering. Goldberg most recently came from Box, where, as VP of Engineering, he helped establish the cloud-based sharing platform. At PayPal, he will work on coming up with new technology for PayPal’s small businesses and merchants.

Koby Avital, VP of Architecture and Infrastructure. Avital comes from Microsoft, where he led the company’s service-oriented architecture strategy and platform development. At PayPal, he will lead strategic architecture, infrastructure and innovative research.

Ryan Granard, VP of Platform Engineering. Ryan comes most recently from DreamWorks Animation, where he built an internal platform that was able to scale globally. He was also an early employee of Webvan, the online grocery service. At PayPal, he will be in charge of building internal cloud services.

Other recent hires include Douglas Crockford, who was appointed senior JavaScript Architect, and Bill Scott, senior director of User Interface Engineering.

In October, PayPal eliminated the jobs as part of a restructuring that reduced the number of product groups it had from nine to one. The eBay-owned company said it wasn’t about cost reductions, but about streamlining product development.

The most notable change was that mobile was no longer a standalone group, but was moved directly into all of the product lines. Similarly, its parent company conducted the same restructuring just last month.

“We set up ourselves to be focused on new strategic areas, so I’ve been going out and aggressively looking for the type of talent we need,” Barrese said.

PayPal will need all the talent it can get to achieve its lofty ambitions.

Not only does it want to be a consumer’s preferred form of payment online and on mobile phones, it is also entering the offline world by enabling payments for small merchants or large retailers like Home Depot. Its big push into retail will happen this year, but a lot of finesse will have to occur behind the scenes in order to get it all to work together seamlessly.

At the same time, it will be competing against other crafty companies in the space, including Square and Groupon, to name just two of the entrants interested in payments over the past few years.

PayPal’s emphasis on building up a strong technology team kicked off in earnest last March, after PayPal named David Marcus as president. Marcus, who had joined the company previously through the acquisition of Zong, filled the vacancy left when Scott Thompson suddenly left to become CEO of Yahoo.

Since Marcus’s appointment, he has been vocal about the changes he wants to make at the company, saying, “There’s a massive culture change happening at PayPal right now.”

The hires today are just more evidence that he’s willing to back those words up.

Now Bazaarvoice has someone to run their new business: Ad tech veteran Ari Paparo.

Paparo’s most recent job was at AppNexus, where he spent a year and change; before that, he was at Nielsen for a spell. But he’s best known for his work at DoubleClick, both before and after the display ad giant sold to Google.

Bazaarvoice is one of many companies trying to leverage the copious amounts of data that e-commerce sites generate into new opportunities, like advertising; clients include Walmart and Best Buy.

E-commerce heavyweight Amazon, which has been circling around ads for a couple years without making a major push, is still thought to have a $1 billion ad business of its own.

Time to step up: Hiring the VP of Sales
For the technology founder-led companies we love to back at Andreessen Horowitz, recognizing the need to “hire different” is particularly important when the company is transitioning from initial product development mode into sales mode. If you’re an a16z founder, you’re very likely an engineer or computer scientist. Virtually all of your early hires will have been engineers or developers. While you’ve hopefully hired people who are smarter than you, they may not be that different from you. Now you’ve got a product, it’s time to hire a VP of Sales. Prepare to hire different — very different!

A typical sales culture is different from a typical engineering culture in almost every aspect — from personality types to values to dress code to working hours. Introducing sales DNA is highly likely to clash with your engineering culture. That prospect will feel quite uncomfortable, but is absolutely critical if you’re serious about building a real company.

While on an intellectual level you may recognize the need to hire an executive who’s different, it can be really hard to act on it in practice. Most of us are naturally more comfortable with people who are like us. If as a first-time tech founder CEO you feel entirely comfortable with that VP of Sales candidate, she’s probably not the right one. The right candidate will feel risky to you from the cultural fit point of view. So, you’ll want to know what the team thinks. However, the interview feedback from the team is likely to make you even more uncomfortable. Here are some real examples of technical team feedback from interviews of highly qualified sales candidates:

“I’m worried that he’s rough around the edges and would clash with our people.”

“His tone was very A-type salesman.”

“I fear for the culture if she were to come aboard.”

“He had very limited understanding of our product.”

“I don’t think he has much idea of what we do and how we do it.”

“I think he could generate massive revenue, but he’d destroy the culture by building a Salesforce-type sales organization.”

So, hiring the right sales leader will involve not just overruling your own emotions, but rejecting the strongly held opinions of several members of your team. Remember, you’re not recruiting her for her knowledge of the company, but for her knowledge of the outside world. As my partner Ben puts it: “Generally, you want product leaders with superior internal knowledge (knowledge of the code base, knowledge of the culture, knowledge of the people). With sales people, it’s the opposite — they need to have external knowledge (knowledge of customers, purchasing processes, customer org structures, customer cultures…).”

Two-way street
While you and the team are trying to evaluate this unfamiliar animal and assess whether you can handle it in your habitat, don’t forget she’s evaluating you, too. Just as you’re asking yourselves things like, “Will this person destroy our culture?”, she’s asking herself, “Are these guys serious about building a business, and will I get the support I need to build a winning sales organization? Will this CEO have my back with the company and the board?” She won’t need everyone’s buy-in on day one — a good VP of sales will earn that over time — but she will need full and sustained support from you and the board to put in place the processes, people and sales culture that can transform a great product organization into a great business. This is your time to lead. The way you handle the recruiting process will speak volumes about whether or not you’re the leader she wants to bet her career on.

Hiring different at Opsware
At Loudcloud/Opsware, we went though three VPs of sales in the first four years of the company. Each one of them was well liked and an excellent fit with the culture, but not one of them was able to consistently hit our quarterly sales targets. By 2003, looking for our fourth sales leader in as many years, we met a guy named Mark Cranney. He seemed very well qualified, and he gave us several pages of references to call if we wanted proof. However, virtually everyone who interviewed him had similar feedback: “He might be a great sales guy, but there’s no way he’d fit here. Way too risky.”

Ben Horowitz and I called every one of his references. They confirmed that Mark was an exceptional sales leader who had consistently achieved great results. But could we take the risk of introducing such a culturally different executive into Opsware’s strong culture? Only Ben and I seemed to think so. We hired him.

Hiring Mark, and the many sales professionals he added to our ranks, was indeed a shock to the system. It created significant tension in the company at times, as sales culture met engineering culture. It was a tension that we badly needed — a healthy tension between the demanding outside world of customer needs and competitive pressures and our sheltered inside world of PRDs and predictable development schedules. Mark was unreasonable — he told it like it was, not how we wanted it to be. It stretched every part of the company, from engineering to marketing to legal to finance. Gradually, we became a more customer-driven organization and we started making our numbers. Over time, cultural discomfort shifted to mutual respect and even to affection. In the years that followed, we won hundreds of the world’s most demanding enterprise IT accounts, met their needs with market-leading products, outpaced a brutally tough competitor, and grew bookings and revenues at a rapid pace. For Opsware, hiring different was the key to unlocking the company’s true potential.

The courage to challenge
Strong leaders don’t just hire people who are smarter than them, or different from them. They also look for people who have the courage to challenge them, and they create a culture that encourages people to do so. Ironically, being surrounded by lots of smart people makes it harder to speak up, particularly for more junior team members. “If all of these smart people think X makes sense, who am I to challenge them?” The more senior you are, the less likely you are to be challenged, and the more you will have to work to encourage it. “She’s the CEO — she must know what she’s doing. I’m not going to question it.” I don’t know about you, but if I were the emperor, I’d want someone to tell me before I walked down the street naked. Like the emperor, you won’t hear diverse opinions if you don’t actively solicit them — and resist the temptation to slaughter them with your ferocious intellect the minute they’re expressed!

At Andreessen Horowitz, we’re fortunate to have a lot of very smart people, both more senior and more junior, around the table when we talk about companies we’ve just met. It takes real courage to speak up when everyone else seems to love (or hate) some opportunity we’ve just seen, but we particularly want to hear that different view. We work hard to encourage people to speak up. The best investments are often controversial, and vigorous debate leads to better investment decisions.

The same applies to business decisions. As CEO, it’s your job to make the call. Having people around the table with the background and the courage to be controversial makes it more likely you’ll make the right one. As your company grows, recognize that you’ll need to hire different, and strive to build a culture that encourages and rewards constructive challenge and diversity of opinion.

John O’Farrell is a partner at Andreessen Horowitz. He sits on the boards of Factual, GoodData, ShoeDazzle, Solum and Tiny Speck, and he works with portfolio companies on partnering, strategic transactions and global expansion. John’s blog can be read at http://john.a16z.com/.

Yahoo said today in a regulatory filing that it had hired one of Google’s top sales execs, Henrique De Castro, as its COO.

Earlier today, I had reported that CEO Marissa Mayer had been close to nabbing the advertising exec, who has most recently been Google’s president of partners business solutions.

De Castro is getting a pile of money for taking the job, including a $600,000 yearly base salary and an annual bonus that could double that figure. In addition, the Silicon Valley Internet giant will give him $36 million in stock grants, including a one-time retention equity award of $18 million and $18 million in the form of performance-based stock options.

He is also getting $1 million in “make-whole” cash for forgoing compensation from Google and $20 million in stock to replace his shares at the search giant that will vest over four years.

That is a very big check, although Mayer garnered an even bigger one when she joined the company in July.

Yahoo’s regulatory statement on the De Castro hiring is embedded below in its entirety, so you can read about his new riches for yourself (unless Yahoo’s persnickety legal head tries to block it).

Said a Google spokesperson about the departure: “We’re grateful to Henrique for all of his contributions at Google and wish him all the best in his new role at Yahoo!”

Both Mayer and also former Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson have made previous overtures to nab De Castro, who has held a number of high-level jobs for Google across the globe, including at DoubleClick, in display ads and with major partners.

While he had previously rebuffed those efforts, this time De Castro bit.

There were signs he might this past week, after De Castro canceled a major offsite for his employees, and several attendees who know him well said he was not present at the company’s first night of its annual Zeitgeist event for advertising and publishing clients. The suave De Castro is usually a more noticeable fixture at such gatherings.

This is Mayer’s first big hire at Yahoo, having added only lower-level or less well-known execs to her stable of talent since she was appointed.

She touted the hire in a tweet, although the news was long out the door, while also noting on Twitter it was her first full day at the office since having her first baby two weeks ago.

My first full day back in the office, and I’m excited to kick it off by announcing my new COO, Henrique de Castro: businesswire.com/news/home/2012…

— marissamayer (@marissamayer) October 15, 2012

The hiring does create a potential issue in the sales arena, especially with current head of revenue Michael Barrett. De Castro and Barrett worked together at Google and multiple sources said the pair did not get along there.

It might not matter. While Barrett has publicly said he planned to stay at Yahoo under Mayer — he was hired by interim CEO Ross Levinson this summer before she arrived — many sources said he does not want to be at the company for the long term.

De Castro has a lot of work to do for the big payout he is getting and it will be a big challenge for him to turn around the troubled organization.

Along with declining growth, search market share, engagement and more, Yahoo also has had a management turnover issue of epic proportions.

De Castro will presumably be in charge of making it all better at Yahoo when he arrives sometime before the beginning of the year and is likely to focus on operations while Mayer zeroes in on products.

One area of trouble: While she has lavished attention on cultural issues and on the company’s tech troops, sources said most of the advertising and media leadership at Yahoo have had little interaction with Mayer since she arrived this summer.

Advertising, of course, is Yahoo’s biggest money maker.

The Portugal-born De Castro has a lot of experience here and is decidedly more of a charmer than Mayer.

More importantly, he is a very high-profile hire, as well as a colorful one. He speaks a menu of languages, dresses with a lot of style and is a worldwide traveler. I know him a little bit and find him to be smooth and confident, even if a little cagey.

Before Google, De Castro worked at Dell and also McKinsey.

All this makes him a perfect choice for Mayer, who is also a former Googler, since she has been considering purchasing a range of companies in the advertising tech space. The most likely candidate of late is PubMatic, which has been in early talks with Yahoo about being acquired.

The Silicon Valley start-up would be a solid add to Yahoo’s ad platform offerings, especially if it wants to stay competitive with Google. PubMatic helps publishers effectively manage their display ad inventory, and competes with Google’s AdMeld.

(Ironically, Barrett ran that start-up, which he sold to Google for $400 million about a year ago.)

Here is the De Castro hiring document from Yahoo:

YHOO-20121015-8K-20121015

And here is the official press release from Yahoo:

Henrique de Castro Named Chief Operating Officer of Yahoo!

October 15, 2012

SUNNYVALE, Calif. – Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) announced today that Henrique de Castro has been hired as chief operating officer (COO). Reporting directly to Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, de Castro will be responsible for strategic and operational management of Yahoo!’s sales, operations, media and business development worldwide.

“Henrique is an incredibly accomplished and rigorous business leader, and I’m personally excited to have him join Yahoo!’s strong leadership team,” said Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo!. “His operational experience in Internet advertising and his proven success in structuring and scaling global organizations make him the perfect fit for Yahoo! as we propel the business to its next phase of growth.”

“The combination of Yahoo!’s unique properties with high quality content, its renewed focus on outstanding user experience and its massive reach bring tremendous value to users, advertisers and partners,” said de Castro. “This is a pivotal point in Yahoo!’s history, and I believe strongly in the opportunity ahead. I can’t wait to join Marissa and the team and get started.”

De Castro brings more than 20 years experience leading operations, strategy, partner management and revenue generation for some of the world’s leading brands. Most recently, he was vice president of Google’s worldwide Partner Business Solutions group, where he was responsible for advertising platforms and services for Google’s publisher and commerce partners. Prior to that, he led Google’s media, mobile and platforms organization, where he helped to grow the business significantly. Prior to Google, de Castro spent two years at Dell Corporation, where he managed sales and business development operations across Western Europe. He has consulted for McKinsey & Company, where he advised numerous clients across many different industries. His career also includes senior positions in private equity and advertising businesses.

De Castro will join the company on or before January 22, 2013, or as soon as he has satisfied his obligations to his current employer.

Cook Associates Executive Search says hiring at “pure play” Internet and digital companies in New York has been slowing down throughout 2012.

Cook says hiring at digital companies increased by 3.2 percent in the third quarter of 2012, down from 5.6 percent in Q2 and 6.2 percent in Q1.

Cook offers a variety of reasons for the slowdown, ranging from Web-specific conditions — a tapering in VC funding to global ones — it’s the economy, stupid. But some job growth is better than no job growth, and Cook says the 320 companies it surveyed still added some 900 jobs in the last 3 months, bringing total employment to around 26,000.

(And yes, New York City is still no Silicon Valley, and it never will be. And that’s OK!)

Cook says Google tops the list of job-adders in the city, which isn’t surprising at all, since the search giant has been fueling digital employment in New York for years — that’s why it dropped $2 billion on a block-long building in Chelsea two years ago.

But it’s worth noting that several of the other top employers in Cook’s survey are almost brand-new: Rent the Runway, AppNexus and Warby Parker didn’t exist a few years ago, and now they’re hiring like mad. Here’s the full top 10 list:

1. Google
2. Rent the Runway
3. Amazon
4. AppNexus
5. eBay
6. Facebook
7. LinkedIn
8. Gilt Groupe
9. Etsy
10. Warby Parker

The payments company is perhaps best known for allowing small businesses, such as taco trucks and taxicab drivers, to accept credit and debit cards using their mobile phones. It is also well known because its CEO, Jack Dorsey, is also a founder of Twitter.

Square is issuing a modest three-paragraph press release this morning announcing the details, which is ironic given the round’s massive size.

A spokesman said that Square has raised more than $200 million in the round, although he would not confirm the company’s valuation. However, according to sources familiar with the deal, Square is now valued at an eye-popping $3.25 billion. That’s slightly less than the $4 billion valuation we reported it was seeking back in April.

Investors participating in the round include Citi Ventures, Rizvi Traverse Management and Starbucks Coffee Company.

The funding will help the company continue to grow, including plans for international expansion later this year.

In an interview several weeks ago, Square COO Keith Rabois said that the company plans to start marketing itself aggressively. It already has commercials on TV, and a wide-ranging deal with Starbucks announced last month will also help. Starbucks said then that it would invest $25 million into the company, and start using the funds to process all of its debit and credit transactions in the U.S. Starbucks will also allow its customers to pay for their lattes using Square’s consumer-facing app.

Rabois said then that he was certain that the transition from registers to iPads or other tablets will happen quickly.

To date, Square has raised around $340 million, money it will surely need if it hopes to disrupt something as large as the payments industry. So far, it has started to make a dent.

A year ago, Square had about 150 employees and was processing more than $1 billion on an annual basis. Today, it has 400-plus employees and is processing more than $8 billion a year. Rabois said he expects the company to hire 100 more employees by the end of the year.

Square’s valuation is rich by at least one historical measure. In a previous story, I compared the start-up to PayPal’s early days, noting:

PayPal, which was also looking to disrupt the banking industry by enabling peer-to-peer payments online, was sold for $1.5 billion to eBay in 2002, just months after going public at a valuation of nearly $800 million.

At the time it went public, the company was approximately doubling year over year, and had generated $103.7 million in 2001, its first full year of operations — slightly less than Square’s estimated revenue ($122 million).

Much like PayPal back then, Square faces intense competition, so making alliances with much larger companies or raising big war chests is critically important.

Square also faces stiff competition and pricing pressure from Intuit, eBay’s PayPal, Google, and other upstarts, like Pay Anywhere.

And it is still possible to compare Square to a modern-day PayPal. PayPal has said it is expecting to transact $10 billion in mobile payments volume this year, which is $2 billion more than what Square is processing on an annual basis. And, as with Square, nearly 100 percent of PayPal’s mobile transactions are occurring on the phone, but it is quickly ramping up its in-store payments business, too.

According to several sources, Yahoo is now on the hunt for a COO — with special emphasis on someone with turnaround experience — presumably to be a worker-bee No. 2 to product-guru CEO Marissa Mayer.

Several Silicon Valley execs and others outside of tech have been contacted by Spencer Stuart, the executive talent firm that is working on a number of other exec searches for Yahoo.

It is not clear if Mayer is on board this plan for a COO and other sources said she has different ideas for the management organization at Yahoo, including an elaborate general manager system that is similar to that at Google. Mayer, who come to Yahoo from the search giant, has put a lot of practices from her former employer in place, from free food to weekly all-hands meetings to more stringent hiring.

In any case, those candidates contacted recently have been told that the company is looking for a top exec with a focus on restructuring and also finance. Presumably, in this scenario, Mayer will focus on product and innovation — her strengths — while the COO would perhaps be responsible for making the trains run on time on the business side of Yahoo. A plethora of employees who have met with her have stressed her intense interest in products, which is mirrored by much less attention to more mundane business issues.

Perhaps the highest profile COO hire of a similar sort has been Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, who was brought in at a dicey time for the social networking site to work on the business while co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg focused on its product.

Such an exec could be a good idea, since — despite the wide latitude Mayer has been given to make changes — Yahoo can not afford much damage to its current operations as Wall Street investors wait for her strategy to reinvigorate the company.

In fact, a recent filing in which Yahoo said Mayer was rethinking its promise to return a $4 billion-plus cash windfall from the sales of assets in China to shareholders caused the stock to drop quickly, largely due to a decided lack of information about what she planned to do with the money.

It will be interesting to see who would be intrigued by the mammoth job of helping fix Yahoo, since most think the process will inevitably include major layoffs.

Spencer Stuart’s Jim Citrin worked on the troubled tech giant’s recent CEO search, which ended up in the hiring of the high-profile Google exec. Mayer’s hiring was a public relations coup for Yahoo’s board, especially its large shareholder Dan Loeb of Third Point.

Mayer herself has also been reaching out to her extensive circle of colleagues at Google and elsewhere in tech to come help her turn around Yahoo. Most recently, she has been trying to hire a former Googler Katie Jacobs Stanton, who once worked with Mayer and now runs international efforts for Twitter.

At the same time, several top execs have left Yahoo since Mayer arrived as she conducts a house cleaning and puts her own team into place. That has included its former interim CEO Ross Levinsohn and HR head David Windley. More such departures are expected.

Mayer has also kept execs, including making interim general counsel Ron Bell the permanent one last week. She has also relied heavily on Yahoo co-founder David Filo.

But her new hires have mostly been lower-level ones, made up of staff who had been close to her at Google.

I would ask for comment from Yahoo, but one of those Mayer newbies at Yahoo — Anne Espiritu, who appears to be a ghost — is still sitting on a number of my and other reporter’s requests to comment on various issues that have been completely unanswered. I have now decided to move onto the other two — Patricia Moll Kriese and Andrew Schulte — to see if they disappear too.

Additionally, to fuel the company’s growth, it has plans to hire aggressively, and recently appointed four new high-level executives.

“We want to be the most-visited premium home site in the U.S.,” Mack said, adding that the goal is to rival household names, like Pottery Barn, Crate & Barrel, Williams-Sonoma, West Elm and Restoration Hardware.

The four new hires are VP of Brand Development Sascha Jamall, who most recently ran brand and sourcing at Michaels Arts and Crafts; VP of Legal and General Counsel Susan Stick, who previously held a similar title at Skype; Chief People Officer John K. Anderson, who joins from Quidsi, a subsidiary of Amazon.com; and Chief Product & Technology Officer Jean Sini, who most recently ran engineering at Mint.com.

By the end of the year, Mack said, the San Francisco company could add 30 to 50 employees to bring the total headcount to as many as 350. Most of the new hires will be engineers, he said, adding that Sini has a “blank check” to add as much talent as needed.

One Kings Lane was founded in late 2008 by Susan Feldman and Alison Pincus (wife of Mark Pincus, founder and CEO of Zynga, the social games company); Mack joined two years ago.

The online retailer sells designer items for the home, ranging from large oriental rugs to sophisticated and modern side tables. Most of the products are sold at deep discounts, and because of limited inventory and scarcity of availability on other sites, some items can sell out in as little as five minutes. If they don’t, they are pulled from the site within 72 hours.

Mack, who is insanely bullish about the company’s prospects, said that even though it is not yet profitable, he doesn’t consider the plans frivolous. Over the past year, One Kings Lane has been able to double top-line revenue, while also managing to cut losses in half.

Still, despite the retailer’s accomplishments, it has remained fairly quiet about its plans, with the exception of announcing several large funding rounds. Last September, the company raised $40 million from Tiger Global Management, Institutional Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Greylock Partners. The round brought total funding to $67 million and valued the firm at $440 million.

Since launching more than three years ago, the company has slowly expanded beyond its roots as a flash sales site.

In 2010, it added “tag sales,” which lets larger-scale interior designers sell off unused items on the site, and this year, it introduced a marketplace, allowing third-party boutiques to sell their unsold inventory on the site — although not all that apply are approved.

To keep up with demand from its five million members, Mack estimates that the site is now listing between 1,000 and 2,000 new products every day, but the goal is not to increase that number too much. Instead, he said, the company wants to stock more of each item to keep from selling out. That way, the site continues to be easy to browse, unlike large retailers that stock millions of items.

Mack said there are two primary ways that One Kings Lane will grow in the future.

The first is by gaining a larger share of home decor purchases, as more shopping shifts online.

He estimates that in 2007 the online home decor market totaled $9 billion, and that by 2015 it will be worth $23 billion. He also anticipates shopping to continue to increase on mobile phones. Already, mobile makes up 22 percent of the company’s sales, and it’s still growing. Other flash sales sites, including Gilt Groupe and Fab.com, are also hoping to benefit from this trend.

The second opportunity is for One Kings Lane to begin designing its own product lines, which is precisely why Mack hired Jamall, the company’s new VP of brand development. As part of Jamall’s responsibilities, he will work with existing suppliers to create one-of-a-kind products for the site. The products could either carry the vendor’s name or the One Kings Lane brand.

At some point, Mack said, an IPO is an option for One Kings Lane, but he isn’t in a hurry — especially as it spends aggressively during this hiring blitz.

“We are enjoying being nimble and operating in the private capital markets,” he quipped.

Yahoo revealed in a regulatory filing that it could be paying its new CEO Marissa Mayer a total of close to $60 million to turn the company around.

The mega-sum includes salary, equity grants, stock options, a make-whole payment for the Google shares she left behind and, perhaps most remarkably, a $30 million one-time retention award.

The amount, which is a whole lot more than what the last two Yahoo CEOs — Carol Bartz and Scott Thompson — were paid is, um, rather large.

One Yahoo board member had characterized the pay package to me as “big, big bucks,” as I reported earlier today.

I would say so!

(Side note: Mayer is already extraordinarily wealthy from her stint at Google, where she was its 20th employee.)

Here’s the breakdown of the largely performance-based compensation:

The salary amount is typical at $1 million, with an annual bonus of up to 200 percent of the base salary, which is $2 million. But, according to Yahoo’s employment letter, she could also get up to a 400 percent bonus, dependent on exceeding targets, which is $4 million.

Mayer also gets an equity award for 2012 of $12 million in stock ($6 million) and options ($6 million) that vests over three years. (She could get another similar grant annually, but I did not include that in the overall number, which is $12 million annually or more if she exceeds targets.)

The really big number is a huge up-front, one-time retention award, vesting over five years, of $15 million in stock and $15 million in options.

Finally, there is a make-whole payment of $14 million for the stock she left behind at Google.

Overall, that means about $5.4 million for the rest of this year and could add up to $20 million each year to come.

The pay package was hotly debated by the board as to whether the high-profile exec was worth the huge amount.

While Mayer is considered a talented techie, a very strong decision maker and adept at product innovation, some of the board’s directors raised concerns about her and paying so much to retain her.

One issue: She had been notably passed over by Google CEO Larry Page for one of the major unit jobs in his reorganization of the company, while others in her peer group had been promoted.

That said, since such company ups and downs happen all the time, others argued that Mayer was just the kind of disruptive agent of change that Yahoo needs, especially because she could inspire its engineers and also attract much needed talent.

The enormous compensation was pushed through, said several sources, by Dan Loeb, the one-time activist shareholder who now appears to be the puppet master of the Yahoo board. He owns about six percent of the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

(Another side note: Multiple sources tell me that Loeb has been making calls to all kinds of Internet figures this week, looking for high-fives for his landing of Mayer, a hiring that was largely engineered by him.)

Her appointment has surely garnered a lot of attention for Yahoo, with massive media coverage of the dynamic young exec. Some of the coverage has focused on her being a woman and also on the fact that she is currently pregnant.

But much of it is focused on how Yahoo — a deeply troubled company that has been trying to revive itself for many years now without success and with a lot of management mishegas — has been able to attract such a high-profile and impressive-resumed leader to goose both its products and its stock.

Let’s hope Mayer can do just that, because Yahoo is surely paying up big-time for the privilege.

Please take a gander here at the filing, directly from the Department of the Internet Rich Get Richer:

YHOO-20120719-8K-20120715

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

The appointment of Marissa Mayer as CEO of Yahoo earlier today was a definitively splashy move by the board of the troubled Internet giant.

And a key impresario of the showy hiring of the high-profile Google exec? None other than Yahoo’s former foe now turned driving force Daniel Loeb of the Third Point hedge fund.

It was classic Loeb style — brash, quick and done with an eye to the optics of the move as well as its impact.

The selection of the high-profile Mayer was unanimous among the Yahoo directors, who have now clearly gone in a product direction over a media one, represented by interim CEO Ross Levinsohn.

The choice came down to Mayer or Levinsohn and, in this, there really was no choice to speak of given her much more honed tech and product pedigree.

Mayer was integral to the early days of Google especially, in charge for a long time over its search product. More recently, though, she had been working on local efforts.

But, it was notable to many inside and outside the company that she did not get one of the key senior vice president nods at Google in a major reorg of the company under new CEO Larry Page.

“She was pretty much voted off the island, even though she was critical to its earliest successes,” said one person close to the situation.

Recently, multiple sources said she had been quietly seeking an exit from the search giant, including considering several venture firms. She also recently joined the board of retail giant Walmart.

Loeb, who had met Mayer relatively recently, was one of the key forces in pushing the board to consider aiming for someone of her level.

In fact, multiple sources said that he has become an influential voice — perhaps the most influential — on the board. While there has been a search committee run by director David Kenny, Loeb has also been actively buttonholing prospects, including focusing his early CEO search efforts on Hulu’s Jason Kilar.

That did not pan out, as Kilar withdrew himself from contention, but sources said Loeb kept pushing for a big name who would burnish Yahoo’s bruised reputation.

It’s all part of a series of efforts by the New York hedge fund head — who has been spending a lot of time of late trying to learn the complicated byways of Silicon Valley — to be more than just a smash-and-grab money man.

Loeb now owns close to six percent of Yahoo and is intent on reviving its prospects and, more importantly, its moribund stock.

And nabbing Mayer — who often appears in glossy magazine spreads, part of an effort that she has promoted that has made her the face of the search giant over the last decade — fits into that strategy well.

Indeed, Mayer will now be charged with the difficult task of creating innovative products to win at Yahoo going forward and even competing with Google in some arenas.

It’s clear she will attract talent, and is reportedly considering several other current and former Googlers to bring on board at Yahoo.

It will take a lot of such deep expertise, given Yahoo’s dicey prospects of late, with problems ranging from its advertising technology to weak morale to, perhaps most importantly, the continued lack of a clear strategic direction.

Whether Mayer can stem the tide is unclear, with some comparing her task to an even bigger version of the massive challenges and slow turnaround another former Googler, Tim Armstrong, has faced at AOL.

“Is she the Tim show, part 2, or can she remake Yahoo into a successful narrative going forward?,” said one person close to the situation.

One thing’s for certain: Today, at least, it was also the Dan Loeb show.

Surely Etsy, of all places, should be an attractive place to work for engineers who are women, Hedlund thought.

As an online marketplace for handmade goods, more than 75 percent of Etsy’s buyers and sellers are women. And further, the company’s engineering team works on interesting problems around product discovery, has a quick-moving culture (it releases, on average, 27 live updates to its site per day, according to a live display when I visited), and is part of a company recently certified as a B Corporation — recognizing its social purpose beyond profit.

Marc Hedlund

Plus, Hedlund has a three-year-old daughter, and he wants her to eventually feel like she has the opportunity to share his career, if she wants to.

So he made hiring women to his team a sort of personal mission.

Hedlund had some early success — increasing Etsy’s number of female engineers to 12, by doing things like cold-calling recruits himself and finding promising candidates straight out of college — but in the past couple months, he’s gotten more creative.

In April, Hedlund — who previously founded the failed personal finance start-up Wesabe – advertised $5,000 in grants for women to attend a three-month program to turn people with a passion for programming into professional engineers. It’s called Hacker School, and it takes place in New York this summer. He also volunteered to host the session at Etsy’s Brooklyn office.

After having one female student in all of its past three classes, the current batch at Hacker School now has 23 women out of 53 students, said co-founder Nicholas Bergson-Shilcock. That’s still under half of enrollment, but some 661 women applied for the summer program, with an enormous bump following Hedlund’s announcement. “If anything, the admissions standards went up,” Bergson-Shilcock said.

Etsy ended up raising its grant amount to $7,000 for 10 students, to allow for taxes, and signed on Yammer and 37signals to provide four more grants each, for a total of $126,000 offered for female students who asked for financial assistance.

Hacker School's first day in session at Etsy

Hedlund said he’s ready and waiting to recruit some of those women when they finish the program, which was kicking off its very first day when I visited Etsy’s office last week.

That’s actually part of the premise of Hacker School, a year-old unstructured program based around independent learning and contributing to free and open source projects. There’s no cost to students, but Hacker School tries to place graduates at programming jobs in exchange for a $20,000 fee paid by the hiring company.

(Hacker School evolved out of a Y Combinator start-up called Hackruiter, and has raised $200,000 from Founder Collective and SV Angel.)

After dropping in on the gender-balanced Hacker School classes, Hedlund said, “It almost feels like time travel, more futuristic than any technology project I’ve seen: A trip to the future of what our industry should and will look like.”

(Image courtesy of James Duncan Davidson for Web 2.0 Expo NY 2010 presented by O’Reilly Media and UBM TechWeb)

While former Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson fades from the tech scene — besides getting jacked from the top job at the Silicon Valley Internet giant, he’s also just come off two tech boards he had served on — the investigation over his hiring and how a fake computer science degree got into the company’s regulatory filings continues.

While the quick-fire controversy burned Thompson, as well as now former Yahoo director Patti Hart, the special committee of independent board members is still at work trying to figure out how such a mess was made in the first place.

And, more importantly, who knew what when and told whom.

At the time the committee was announced, Yahoo said it would “conduct a thorough review of CEO Scott Thompson’s academic credentials, as well as the facts and circumstances related to the review and disclosure of those credentials in connection with Thompson’s appointment as CEO.”

The special committee is chaired by Yahoo’s new Chairman Fred Amoroso and includes John Hayes and Thomas McInerney, two independent directors who joined the board in April.

Yahoo also hired independent counsel Terry Bird of the law firm Bird, Marella, Boxer, Wolpert, Nessim, Drooks and Licenberg in Los Angeles to handle the inquiry.

The company also noted at the time that “the special committee and the entire Board appreciate the urgency of the situation and the special committee will therefore conduct the review in an independent, thorough and expeditious manner. The Board intends to make the appropriate disclosures to shareholders promptly upon completion of the review.”

Gripped by urgency myself, I have grown weary waiting by the phone for some official answers, which sources said will not be forthcoming for some time.

But since I am the most curious of cats — uh-oh! — I started dialing around on my own to find out what’s what.

And, according to sources — especially since Thompson has settled with Yahoo and will not get severance due to the academic falsehood — the big focus is now centering on if the company’s staff screwed up the background check of his academic credentials, thus allowing it to get into its official filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and also on Yahoo’s corporate Web site.

When Thompson was hired from eBay, where he was president of its PayPal payments division, the online commerce company had the correct bio information in its SEC filings, although not on its Web site or in its PR materials.

The question is: Did someone from Yahoo simply rely on Web bios and not check eBay filings and did anyone ever re-check Thompson’s college records? (Note: It took me 15 minutes flat to find out he did not have such a degree at Stonehill College in the Boston area.)

If lazy checking was the case, it spells rank incompetence on the part of staffers, as well as Hart, who headed the search after Yahoo fired its previous CEO Carol Bartz last fall.

A much more troubling line of inquiry taking place is aimed at the possibility that someone at Yahoo did discover the discrepancy in Thompson’s resume and either did not report it up the chain of command or did and it was either lost or ignored or, well, worse.

While this certainly ain’t Watergate, such a situation would be very hard for Yahoo to explain away as easily to shareholders, especially potentially litigious ones. As it is always said, the coverup can often be more damaging than the crime itself.

And, if it is determined by the special committee that certain employees knew of Thompson’s resume inaccuracy, it will most certainly result in dismissals of Yahoo employees.

The focus on the committee — which truly cannot sweep this under the rug, if it occurred in this much more serious scenario — is most obviously the legal department of Yahoo, which is responsible for making certain filings are accurate.

Also under scrutiny is the quickness of the hiring of Thompson.

Among the questions is how much vetting was done and whether adequate questions about him were asked among a variety of possible sources.

When he was picked in January, Thompson was a dark-horse candidate for many, including some Yahoo board members.

In fact, he was not on the initial headhunting lists prepared by outside talent search firm Heidrick & Struggles.

That’s because Heidrick had placed Thompson at eBay in mid-2000 and could not then recommend him to Yahoo. As it turned out, Thompson took it upon himself to cold email Yahoo board member and Intuit CEO Brad Smith about the job, who then passed Thompson’s interest to Hart.

Heidrick had no involvement in the checking of Thompson, although he later blamed the firm in a public meeting with Yahoo employees for putting the error in his bio in the first place from when he was hired at eBay. Heidrick quickly called the accusation “verifiably not true” in a memo to its own employees.

Sources said that meant that the firm had a resume that Thompson had submitted to it that also contained the error.

But the central mystery of how that mistake appeared on his bio will likely remain just that without further explanation from Thompson.

In a radio interview in 2009, he did not correct a specific question about the twin degrees he appeared to have held and seemed to even agree with the show’s host, Moira Gunn, about them.

Later, she told me in a video interview that Thompson had clearly indicated to her in the prep for that interview that he indeed had a computer science degree.

Still, it is still not clear — and may never be — who put the faux computer science credential on his resume in the first place.

So, with all apologies to Winston Churchill: It might remain a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

According to numerous sources, Yahoo is claiming “cause” in its parting with former CEO Scott Thompson, related to the fake computer science degree on his resume.

Such a determination will mean the company is not obligated to pay him the large severance that would have been due to him otherwise.

In his offer letter on January 3, Yahoo spelled out the terms of the employment agreement, noting what would happen if he left the company under more positive “without cause” terms.

“If Mr. Thompson’s employment is terminated by the Company without cause or by Mr. Thompson for good reason, the Company will offer him severance benefits similar to the benefits it provides to other senior executives of the Company at the time of his termination,” reads the document, which was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. “In addition, if Mr. Thompson’s employment is terminated by the Company without cause, by Mr. Thompson for good reason, or due to Mr. Thompson’s death or disability, the Make-Whole RSUs that are then outstanding and unvested will fully vest upon his termination.”

The “Make-Whole” RSUs — or restricted stock units, related to his time as president of eBay’s PayPal payments division — were valued at $6.5 million in Yahoo’s SEC filings.

But sources said Yahoo has relied on another clause in Thompson’s offer letter, titled “Code of Ethics and Yahoo! Policies,” to make the case that it would not have to pay out such a large sum to him.

Reads the clause:

“Yahoo! is committed to creating a positive work environment and conducting business ethically. As an employee of Yahoo!, you will be expected to abide by the Company’s policies and procedures including, but not limited to, Yahoo!’s Guide2Working@Y!, Yahoo!’s Code of Ethics and Yahoo!’s Corporate Governance Guidelines,” reads the letter. “Yahoo! requests that you review, sign and bring with you on your Employment Start Date, the enclosed Code of Ethics Acknowledgment Form.”

Under the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s ethical terms, the borked bio and how it got that way — which was still under investigation when Thompson stepped down — was the major issue in his ouster, since he was responsible for making sure it was accurate when submitted for regulatory filings.

In addition, while Thompson publicly blamed a headhunting firm for making the error back in the mid-2000 timeframe, that company — Heidrick & Struggles — hit back, saying his claims were “verifiably not true.” According to sources, Heidrick apparently possesses an inaccurate resume submitted to them by Thompson.

Heidrick, which placed Thompson at eBay many years ago, was not involved in his hiring at Yahoo. It had to recuse itself from his vetting as part of its search for a new Yahoo CEO, because it had placed him previously.

In fact, Thompson had nominated himself for the job via cold emails with Yahoo board members and was examined and hired quickly.

Perhaps too quickly, given the poor background check that was discovered by activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point.

Sources close to the board said that investor pressure relate to these credibility lapses grew too loud, along with employee rancor at Thompson’s actions — forcing the issue this weekend.

What was definitely not a reason for Thompson’s departure from Yahoo — although it was unfortunate timing — was an unspecified “illness” I referenced in my initial story on the subject.

(Note to readers: I found out this weekend that illness was thyroid cancer. But I declined to name it specifically, since I felt it was Thompson’s right to publicly reveal such a personal health issue and not mine. While I recently suffered a stroke and the experience perhaps influenced this editorial decision, the cancer was only a side issue to the resume drama at Yahoo and not naming it specifically seemed, well, more responsible to me. Argue amongst yourselves about it, but that’s my take. And also, I wish Thompson a successful treatment and speedy recovery)

That said, The Wall Street Journal did an entire piece about the cancer today today, noting that “the decision to step down from Yahoo was in part influenced by Mr. Thompson’s cancer diagnosis.”

That might have been true for Thompson — a source close to him characterized the parting as “mutually agreed” — and perhaps his illness accelerated the resume controversy.

But all that aside, he was given no choice in the matter by the Yahoo board, numerous sources said. The parting was almost entirely due to the mess about the botched bio and all its implications.

In fact, in all its public communications about his leaving, Yahoo and its execs offered no token thanks and barely even mentioned Thompson, such as in its official statement yesterday.

It read, referring to newly chosen interim CEO Ross Levinsohn: “Mr. Levinsohn replaces Scott Thompson, former Chief Executive Officer, who has left the Company.”

And left it he has, without a choice and with what will be a much smaller settlement, sources said. It is not clear when Yahoo has to unveil those terms in public documents.

RELATED POSTS:

• Yahoo’s Parting With Thompson Will Be for “Cause” (a.k.a. CSLie)
• Ross Levinsohn’s Yahoo Plan: Back to the Future
• Here’s New Yahoo CEO’s First Note to Troops! (The Leaking-Internal-Memos-to-ATD Policy Remains in Effect As Usual)
• Yahoo Officially Confirms ATD Report on CEO Changes and Proxy Settlement
• Meet the Man I Call “The Hair”: The Video Stylings of Yahoo’s Newest CEO Ross Levinsohn
• Will Thompson’s Ouster Mean a Yahoo-Facebook Patent Settlement Too?
• Exclusive: Yahoo’s Thompson Out; Levinsohn In; Board Settlement With Loeb Nears Completion
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• Is He In or Is He Out? Crunchtime for Scott Thompson at Yahoo.
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• Tech Nation’s Gunn Says She and Yahoo CEO Discussed Their CS Degrees Before 2009 Show (Video and Audio)
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• Yahoo Should Expect Incoming Lawsuit Lobbed by Loeb Tomorrow on CEO Hiring
• They Shoot Yahoo CEOs, Don’t They? But Not Without a Really Smoking Gun and a Much Stronger Board.
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• In 2009 Interview, Yahoo CEO Does Not Deny He Has a CS Degree, and Calls Himself an “Engineer” (Audio)
• Yahoo’s Board Will “Review” Resume Discrepancy of CEO
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• Dan Loeb Alleges “Discrepancies” on Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s Resume Related to Computer Science Degree

Yahoo’s embattled CEO Scott Thompson (pictured here) is set to step down from his job at the Silicon Valley Internet giant, in what will be dramatic end to a controversy over a fake computer science degree that he had on his bio, according to multiple sources close to the situation.

The pair will apparently say he is departing for “personal reasons.” Sources said that Thompson will be claiming to be leaving due to a serious illness that he recently discovered he had.

But the evolving crisis — which is just over a week old — centered on his botched resume and how he handled the thorny issue is the key reason for the abrupt end to his tenure as a CEO.

Thompson’s likely replacement on an interim basis will be Yahoo’s global media head Ross Levinsohn, who most recently also ran its Americas unit, including its advertising sales.

In addition to the management upheaval, Yahoo’s board is closing in on a settlement with the man who discovered Thompson’s misstep, activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point, said sources.

The situation could change, since Yahoo’s full board still has to meet this morning to officially approve the sweeping changes at the long-troubled company.

But, if it is, this development goes a long way toward fixing some of what has been ailing Yahoo recently.

And it’ll also be a stunning victory for Loeb (pictured here), since the pugnacious hedge fund investor is set to get three board seats from a slate proposed by him as part of a proxy fight aimed at Yahoo. The new Yahoo directors will be media exec Michael Wolf and turnaround specialist Harry Wilson. Loeb’s fourth selection — former NBC head Jeff Zucker — will withdraw.

The five current Yahoo directors — who were to step down at the company’s annual meeting this summer — will leave the board effective immediately, sources said, to make way for the Third Point selections.

Finally, Yahoo’s recently added director Fred Amoroso will be named chairman of the board.

Amoroso is the director who has been conducting the investigation into the issues raised by Loeb about how the fake academic credentials got in Thompson’s public bios, as well as in Yahoo’s regulatory filings, and also the hurried circumstances around his hiring in January.

Those mysteries — read, screw-ups — might never be solved now, although Thompson made a convoluted attempt to explain it all in two awkward employee meetings at the end of last week. In those gatherings, according to numerous sources, he blamed a headhunting firm for introducing the mistake when he was being hired for a job at eBay in the mid-2000 timeframe.

That company, Heidrick and Struggles, slapped back last week with an internal memo, noting that Thompson’s claim was “verifiably not true.” Sources said that Heidrick told Yahoo’s board that it was in possession of a resume that Thompson had apparently submitted showing the inaccurate CS degree on it.

That memo, impugning Thompson’s credibility, was one of many that piled on to create an impossible situation for the Yahoo board, related to his leadership ability going forward.

Thompson had also previously issued a Yahoo statement, in which he apologized for the “distraction” caused by the problematic resume, but not for the mistake itself.

And, initially, Yahoo — under his direction — had called the borked resume an “inadvertent error.”

Such fumbling to fix the situation was among the many other issues that the board has been considering relating the ability of Thompson to remain in his job. Also of importance was the sinking morale of Yahoo employees, who had largely rejected Thompson’s excuses in the ResuMess scandal.

Internal message boards at Yahoo lit up all last week, with staffers largely rejecting his explanations. In addition, a number of top execs and engineers approached the board calling for Thompson’s firing.

While that’s not precisely what happened here, it’s close enough to describe Thompson’s departure as inevitable.

All this change comes in the wake of a massive restructuring he was in the midst of at Yahoo, after 2,000 employee layoffs.

Thompson was pushing forward a vision of adding a much more significant data and commerce element to Yahoo’s largely ad-based business.

That is likely to be less stressed under media-focused Levinsohn, who will be essentially trying out to be the permanent CEO.

Well known in the media and advertising communities, he has worked at a number of big online efforts over many years.

According to his bio at Yahoo, where he arrived in 2010:

He previously served as the President of News Corporation’s Fox Interactive Media, where he was responsible for the day-to-day operations, strategy and acquisitions that helped transformed the company into a leader in digital media. He also held senior management positions with AltaVista, an early pioneer and leader in search, CBS Sportsline where he oversaw all content and development for the top rated sports site, and HBO where he launched and oversaw a unit developing new programming and revenue streams. Levinsohn also was the co-founder and managing director of Fuse Capital, an investment and strategic equity management firm focused on investing in and building digital media and communications companies.

Levinsohn sits on the board of Freedom Communications and the Bogart Pediatric Cancer Research Program. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from The American University.

So far in my checking, Levinsohn’s resume is accurate.

More to come, obviously.

I have emails and texts and calls into everyone for comment, but apparently they are all out at a Mother’s Day brunch (except me).

RELATED POSTS:

• Yahoo’s Parting With Thompson Will Be for “Cause” (a.k.a. CSLie)
• Ross Levinsohn’s Yahoo Plan: Back to the Future
• Here’s New Yahoo CEO’s First Note to Troops! (The Leaking-Internal-Memos-to-ATD Policy Remains in Effect As Usual)
• Yahoo Officially Confirms ATD Report on CEO Changes and Proxy Settlement
• Meet the Man I Call “The Hair”: The Video Stylings of Yahoo’s Newest CEO Ross Levinsohn
• Will Thompson’s Ouster Mean a Yahoo-Facebook Patent Settlement Too?
• Exclusive: Yahoo’s Thompson Out; Levinsohn In; Board Settlement With Loeb Nears Completion
• Heidrick & Struggles Slaps Back at Thompson’s Yahoo in Blame Game Over ResuMess
• Is He In or Is He Out? Crunchtime for Scott Thompson at Yahoo.
• Not So Scott Free? Yahoo’s Other Big Shareholder — Cap Re — Leaning Toward Supporting Loeb Over Thompson ResuMess.
• Tech Nation’s Gunn Says She and Yahoo CEO Discussed Their CS Degrees Before 2009 Show (Video and Audio)
• Loeb Calls Again for Thompson Firing From Yahoo, as Former eBay Boss Supports Him
• Place Your Bets: Will Loeb Drop Another Bomb on Yahoo at Vegas Confab Later Today?
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• Buffett Comments on Trust Issue in Yahoo CEO BioGate: “You’ve Got a Problem”
• Loeb Lobs Lawsuit, as Expected, at Yahoo’s Borked Bio Mess
• As Yahoo CEO Reaches Out to Top Staff, Board Meets to Weigh “Options” (I.E., Deciding Who Gets to Take the Borked Bio Blame)
• Yahoo Should Expect Incoming Lawsuit Lobbed by Loeb Tomorrow on CEO Hiring
• They Shoot Yahoo CEOs, Don’t They? But Not Without a Really Smoking Gun and a Much Stronger Board.
• Yahoo’s Thompson Asks Employees to “Stay Focused” — Except Not on Him
• In 2009 Interview, Yahoo CEO Does Not Deny He Has a CS Degree, and Calls Himself an “Engineer” (Audio)
• Yahoo’s Board Will “Review” Resume Discrepancy of CEO
• How Did a Phantom CS Degree Get on CEO’s Bio in SEC Filings? Yahoo’s Not Saying.
• Yahoo’s Response on CEO’s Computer Science ResumeGate: “Inadvertent Error”
• Dan Loeb Alleges “Discrepancies” on Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s Resume Related to Computer Science Degree

And it just gets worse in the controversy over Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson and the circumstances around how a fake computer science degree could get onto his bio.

Heidrick & Struggles is smacking back at him for insinuating that the well-known headhunting firm had messed up his resume.

In meetings with employees to attempt to explain the situation yesterday, multiple sources said that Thompson claimed that a mistake made by a headhunting firm in mid-2000, when he was moving to a job at eBay, was the way the inaccuracy got into his bio.

Thompson did not name the firm, but he was clearly referring to Heidrick & Struggles, which handled that placement. It was also working on the Yahoo CEO search, after the Silicon Valley Internet giant fired its former CEO Carol Bartz last fall.

But, because it had originally placed Thompson at eBay, the firm did not work on his hiring at Yahoo.

So, Heidrick was not going to take Thompson’s blame for the botched bio.

“While we were not involved in this placement, there have been both direct and indirect mentions of this relationship in several news articles. Furthermore, if recent media reports are accurate, the CEO of Yahoo! has made potentially damaging allegations about our firm that are simply not true and cannot be allowed to stand in the public record,” wrote CEO Kevin Kelly to staff. “The media articles in question have indicated that the Yahoo! CEO told members of his senior staff that, many years ago, a junior member of our firm invented an academic credential for him in the course of preparing standard profile materials. Based on information in our possession, this allegation is verifiably not true and we have notified Yahoo! to that effect.”

This letter is just another brick in what is looking like an insurmountable wall for Thompson to keep his job at Yahoo. Sources said that the board of Yahoo had been sent a letter from Heidrick on the matter earlier today.

And, let me just say, this latest eruption is simply not good for Thompson’s chances to remain CEO for much longer.

Yahoo declined to comment, but here is the full letter from Kelly to its staff:

Colleagues,

Heidrick & Struggles’ clients across the globe place their trust in our professionalism and discretion, as we assist them in their most significant leadership decisions. We regard that trust as one of our most valuable corporate assets. As such, we do not often comment on internal matters involving our clients. However, recent press accounts have reported statements that contain misstatements of fact and criticisms of our professional services that require a response from us.

As many of you have seen, there has been recent focus on the CEO appointment at one of our long-term clients, Yahoo!. While we were not involved in this placement, there have been both direct and indirect mentions of this relationship in several news articles. Furthermore, if recent media reports are accurate, the CEO of Yahoo! has made potentially damaging allegations about our firm that are simply not true and cannot be allowed to stand in the public record. The media articles in question have indicated that the Yahoo! CEO told members of his senior staff that, many years ago, a junior member of our firm invented an academic credential for him in the course of preparing standard profile materials. Based on information in our possession, this allegation is verifiably not true and we have notified Yahoo! to that effect.

This is why I am writing to you today. All of us at Heidrick & Struggles take our responsibility to our clients very seriously, and it is important for us to set the record straight when our good work and reputation are called into question.

The issue surrounding Yahoo! underscores the importance and impact of the work we do for all of our clients — helping them build the best leadership teams possible. Our clients place their trust in us each day, and we have developed strong policies and procedures over our nearly 60-year history to serve them.

On behalf of the management team and Board of Directors, thank you for your continued support and dedication to Heidrick & Struggles.

Best,
Kevin
L. Kevin Kelly
Chief Executive Officer
Heidrick & Struggles

RELATED POSTS:

• Yahoo’s Parting With Thompson Will Be for “Cause” (a.k.a. CSLie)
• Ross Levinsohn’s Yahoo Plan: Back to the Future
• Here’s New Yahoo CEO’s First Note to Troops! (The Leaking-Internal-Memos-to-ATD Policy Remains in Effect As Usual)
• Yahoo Officially Confirms ATD Report on CEO Changes and Proxy Settlement
• Meet the Man I Call “The Hair”: The Video Stylings of Yahoo’s Newest CEO Ross Levinsohn
• Will Thompson’s Ouster Mean a Yahoo-Facebook Patent Settlement Too?
• Exclusive: Yahoo’s Thompson Out; Levinsohn In; Board Settlement With Loeb Nears Completion
• Heidrick & Struggles Slaps Back at Thompson’s Yahoo in Blame Game Over ResuMess
• Is He In or Is He Out? Crunchtime for Scott Thompson at Yahoo.
• Not So Scott Free? Yahoo’s Other Big Shareholder — Cap Re — Leaning Toward Supporting Loeb Over Thompson ResuMess.
• Tech Nation’s Gunn Says She and Yahoo CEO Discussed Their CS Degrees Before 2009 Show (Video and Audio)
• Loeb Calls Again for Thompson Firing From Yahoo, as Former eBay Boss Supports Him
• Place Your Bets: Will Loeb Drop Another Bomb on Yahoo at Vegas Confab Later Today?
• Exclusive: Yahoo Director in Charge of Botched CEO Vetting to Step Down From Board
• CEO Says Sorry to Yahoos for Borked Bio “Distraction” — But Will Mea Culpa Work Without an Apology for Error? (Memo)
• Buffett Comments on Trust Issue in Yahoo CEO BioGate: “You’ve Got a Problem”
• Loeb Lobs Lawsuit, as Expected, at Yahoo’s Borked Bio Mess
• As Yahoo CEO Reaches Out to Top Staff, Board Meets to Weigh “Options” (I.E., Deciding Who Gets to Take the Borked Bio Blame)
• Yahoo Should Expect Incoming Lawsuit Lobbed by Loeb Tomorrow on CEO Hiring
• They Shoot Yahoo CEOs, Don’t They? But Not Without a Really Smoking Gun and a Much Stronger Board.
• Yahoo’s Thompson Asks Employees to “Stay Focused” — Except Not on Him
• In 2009 Interview, Yahoo CEO Does Not Deny He Has a CS Degree, and Calls Himself an “Engineer” (Audio)
• Yahoo’s Board Will “Review” Resume Discrepancy of CEO
• How Did a Phantom CS Degree Get on CEO’s Bio in SEC Filings? Yahoo’s Not Saying.
• Yahoo’s Response on CEO’s Computer Science ResumeGate: “Inadvertent Error”
• Dan Loeb Alleges “Discrepancies” on Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s Resume Related to Computer Science Degree

As expected, activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point released a new letter on the bio controversy he set off at Yahoo, again calling for the firing of its CEO, Scott Thompson.

“It seems farcical to us that the Board will most likely spend more time deliberating over whether Mr. Thompson should be fired than it did properly vetting whether he should have been hired,” read the letter in part. “The necessary investigation into whether certain senior executives and Board Members knew of Mr. Thompson’s deceptions before hiring him should not delay decisive action over his ethical breaches.”

Loeb, who is waging a proxy fight with Yahoo over board seats he wants, also offered to work with the Yahoo board to find a new CEO if it accepted his slate of directors. In the interim, he suggested Yahoo put either CFO Tim Morse or media head Ross Levinsohn in the job. Morse had taken that position temporarily after Yahoo fired its last CEO Carol Bartz last fall.

Confused yet?

Loeb set off a management crisis there last week with the revelation that Thompson had added a fake computer science degree to his bio.

The first casualty came yesterday with the stepping down of Yahoo director Patti Hart, who was charged with vetting Thompson for the job.

The Yahoo board also announced yesterday that it would be conducting a probe of the circumstances around the hiring, as well as how the faux academic credentials got in Thompson’s bio and also the company’s regulatory filings.

The new letter was a reaction to Thompson’s apology on Monday for the borked bio becoming a “distraction” (but not, oddly, for the mistake itself). Loeb had previously called for Thompson’s firing over the bio fibbing.

Loeb will be appearing at an investor conference in Las Vegas later today, where he will surely be asked about the situation.

In related news, eBay CEO John Donahoe, Thompson’s former boss, lent words of support, but also underscored that the online commerce company’s legal filings of his bio were always correct, even if its Web site and other PR documents handed out were not. Thompson came to Yahoo from a stint as president of eBay’s PayPal payments unit.

As reported by Bloomberg, Donahoe said:

“When Scott was hired at EBay Inc., all of EBay’s filings had the accurate information. Some of EBay’s PR materials had that bio. Our legal filings were taken care of by our legal department. Some of the PR materials had that info,” he said while in Tokyo of the correct bio versus the incorrect one.

Donahoe added: “I think Scott Thompson did a great job at PayPal. I think he’s a very talented leader and I believe he can help Yahoo. I hope they get through this and he can continue to do the very challenging job he’s got of helping to turn Yahoo around. I’m Scott’s biggest fan.”

This has been the first public support of Thompson by a prominent Internet figure, which might help lagging morale at the company.

Here’s the full version of the latest Loeb letter:

Third Point May 9 Letter Release

RELATED POSTS:

• Yahoo’s Parting With Thompson Will Be for “Cause” (a.k.a. CSLie)
• Ross Levinsohn’s Yahoo Plan: Back to the Future
• Here’s New Yahoo CEO’s First Note to Troops! (The Leaking-Internal-Memos-to-ATD Policy Remains in Effect As Usual)
• Yahoo Officially Confirms ATD Report on CEO Changes and Proxy Settlement
• Meet the Man I Call “The Hair”: The Video Stylings of Yahoo’s Newest CEO Ross Levinsohn
• Will Thompson’s Ouster Mean a Yahoo-Facebook Patent Settlement Too?
• Exclusive: Yahoo’s Thompson Out; Levinsohn In; Board Settlement With Loeb Nears Completion
• Heidrick & Struggles Slaps Back at Thompson’s Yahoo in Blame Game Over ResuMess
• Is He In or Is He Out? Crunchtime for Scott Thompson at Yahoo.
• Not So Scott Free? Yahoo’s Other Big Shareholder — Cap Re — Leaning Toward Supporting Loeb Over Thompson ResuMess.
• Tech Nation’s Gunn Says She and Yahoo CEO Discussed Their CS Degrees Before 2009 Show (Video and Audio)
• Loeb Calls Again for Thompson Firing From Yahoo, as Former eBay Boss Supports Him
• Place Your Bets: Will Loeb Drop Another Bomb on Yahoo at Vegas Confab Later Today?
• Exclusive: Yahoo Director in Charge of Botched CEO Vetting to Step Down From Board
• CEO Says Sorry to Yahoos for Borked Bio “Distraction” — But Will Mea Culpa Work Without an Apology for Error? (Memo)
• Buffett Comments on Trust Issue in Yahoo CEO BioGate: “You’ve Got a Problem”
• Loeb Lobs Lawsuit, as Expected, at Yahoo’s Borked Bio Mess
• As Yahoo CEO Reaches Out to Top Staff, Board Meets to Weigh “Options” (I.E., Deciding Who Gets to Take the Borked Bio Blame)
• Yahoo Should Expect Incoming Lawsuit Lobbed by Loeb Tomorrow on CEO Hiring
• They Shoot Yahoo CEOs, Don’t They? But Not Without a Really Smoking Gun and a Much Stronger Board.
• Yahoo’s Thompson Asks Employees to “Stay Focused” — Except Not on Him
• In 2009 Interview, Yahoo CEO Does Not Deny He Has a CS Degree, and Calls Himself an “Engineer” (Audio)
• Yahoo’s Board Will “Review” Resume Discrepancy of CEO
• How Did a Phantom CS Degree Get on CEO’s Bio in SEC Filings? Yahoo’s Not Saying.
• Yahoo’s Response on CEO’s Computer Science ResumeGate: “Inadvertent Error”
• Dan Loeb Alleges “Discrepancies” on Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s Resume Related to Computer Science Degree

CSLie has claimed its first victim, although the mystery is still unsolved.

Patti Hart — the Yahoo director in charge of the search that resulted in the hiring of Scott Thompson as its CEO, making her directly responsible for a clearly botched vetting of his academic record — will not stand for re-election to the board at the next annual meeting, according to sources close to the situation.

Hart — who is CEO of International Game Technology, which makes electronic gaming equipment and systems products — is resigning. Apparently, said sources, her own board asked her to remove herself from the Yahoo mess to better focus on the company she actually runs.

But she is perhaps just a few steps ahead of being pushed, given her key role in the hiring of Thompson, who was president of eBay’s PayPal payments unit when he cold-emailed Yahoo director and Intuit CEO Brad Smith seeking the job.

A Yahoo spokesman declined to comment.

[UPDATE: Yahoo confirmed the inevitable departure later in the day and said the Yahoo board would have nine members going forward. Hart also released a statement, confirming the move.]
Hart, who came to the Yahoo board in 2010, has been head of its corporate governance and nominating committee.

The departure makes her the first casualty — but definitely not the last — of the controversy over how a fake college degree managed to get in Yahoo’s regulatory filings via Thompson’s inaccurate bio.

The issues around how Thompson was hired — including how background checks on him failed to discover that he never got a CS degree from the Boston area’s Stonehill College, as his longtime bio on eBay had claimed — are part of a new investigation by the board.

That will be officially announced later today, along with the hiring of an outside law firm to conduct the probe, which will be headed by independent director Fred Amoroso.

[UPDATE: Yahoo officially said it was forming a special committee to look at Thompson's bio snafu and the circumstances around his hiring. Along with Amoroso, the other members are John Hayes and Thomas McInerney, independent directors who joined the board in April.

"The special committee and the entire Board appreciate the urgency of the situation and the special committee will therefore conduct the review in an independent, thorough and expeditious manner," a statement from Yahoo said.

Interestingly, the statement did not include a show of support for Thompson, which often happens in such circumstances.]

They will have a lot to investigate. Such as this mystery: Thompson’s correct bio appeared in filings eBay made with the Securities and Exchange Commission, while Yahoo’s similar documents were inaccurate about his educational credentials.

Also under scrutiny: How the falsehood was added to Thompson’s public resume, and who put it there; why Thompson never noticed the error, there since at least 2004; why he declined to correct it when asked directly about it; and who at Yahoo might have known about the problem before the hiring.

It’s a basic case of who, what, where, when and how. And, most of all, why anyone would make such a dumb mistake.

Hart would seem to have all the answers to that, along with a forensic firm that worked on the vetting. Key Yahoo staffers were also involved, said sources, although its headhunting firm on the CEO search, Heidrick & Struggles, was not used in relation to Thompson.

Presumably, there is a paper trail of some sort, which was the subject of a legal demand by activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point yesterday. He uncovered the bio error last week, in the middle of pressing a proxy fight to garner board seats.

Loeb’s allegations also nailed Hart in much-less-egregious padding of her own college record, making it appear as if she had economics and marketing degrees. She has one in business administration, with “specialties” (Yahoo’s ridonkulous word, not mine) in economics and marketing.

While Hart’s leaving might assuage some, providing a convenient scapegoat to the bizarre situation, this is by no means over for Yahoo or Thompson.

Another increasingly potent issue is the ever-declining morale at the Silicon Valley Internet giant over the company’s odd response — it initially called the bio problem an “inadvertent error,” without further explanation — and also Thompson’s lack of transparency on the issue.

He released an email to employees last night, apologizing for the “distraction” of the resume issue, but not for the error itself.

That, and other of Thompson’s actions — he has been described to me, by many close to the situation, as defiant over the issue, and as blaming Loeb for conducting a personal vendetta — did not sit well with many, both inside and outside Yahoo.

A Yahoo spokeswoman told me earlier this week that there is much support for Thompson internally and externally, but declined to provide specifics.

But message boards I read were mostly negative about him, as are a plethora of direct emails to me on the situation. One clever commenter on this site bemoaned that Thompson might get off “Scott-free.”

Ouch! Nonetheless, the atmosphere at Yahoo is indeed unsettled.

“Sentiment from employees is unanimous that he must go,” said a Yahoo employee, who has no personal agenda that I can grok, in a common refrain. “He clearly knew and lied for years; and his handling since exposed has been unacceptable.”

Unacceptable or not, though, Hart is the only one going for now. But stay tuned.

Until then, here’s an appearance I made today on WSJ.com to talk about Hart’s departure:

RELATED POSTS:

• Yahoo’s Parting With Thompson Will Be for “Cause” (a.k.a. CSLie)
• Ross Levinsohn’s Yahoo Plan: Back to the Future
• Here’s New Yahoo CEO’s First Note to Troops! (The Leaking-Internal-Memos-to-ATD Policy Remains in Effect As Usual)
• Yahoo Officially Confirms ATD Report on CEO Changes and Proxy Settlement
• Meet the Man I Call “The Hair”: The Video Stylings of Yahoo’s Newest CEO Ross Levinsohn
• Will Thompson’s Ouster Mean a Yahoo-Facebook Patent Settlement Too?
• Exclusive: Yahoo’s Thompson Out; Levinsohn In; Board Settlement With Loeb Nears Completion
• Heidrick & Struggles Slaps Back at Thompson’s Yahoo in Blame Game Over ResuMess
• Is He In or Is He Out? Crunchtime for Scott Thompson at Yahoo.
• Not So Scott Free? Yahoo’s Other Big Shareholder — Cap Re — Leaning Toward Supporting Loeb Over Thompson ResuMess.
• Tech Nation’s Gunn Says She and Yahoo CEO Discussed Their CS Degrees Before 2009 Show (Video and Audio)
• Loeb Calls Again for Thompson Firing From Yahoo, as Former eBay Boss Supports Him
• Place Your Bets: Will Loeb Drop Another Bomb on Yahoo at Vegas Confab Later Today?
• Exclusive: Yahoo Director in Charge of Botched CEO Vetting to Step Down From Board
• CEO Says Sorry to Yahoos for Borked Bio “Distraction” — But Will Mea Culpa Work Without an Apology for Error? (Memo)
• Buffett Comments on Trust Issue in Yahoo CEO BioGate: “You’ve Got a Problem”
• Loeb Lobs Lawsuit, as Expected, at Yahoo’s Borked Bio Mess
• As Yahoo CEO Reaches Out to Top Staff, Board Meets to Weigh “Options” (I.E., Deciding Who Gets to Take the Borked Bio Blame)
• Yahoo Should Expect Incoming Lawsuit Lobbed by Loeb Tomorrow on CEO Hiring
• They Shoot Yahoo CEOs, Don’t They? But Not Without a Really Smoking Gun and a Much Stronger Board.
• Yahoo’s Thompson Asks Employees to “Stay Focused” — Except Not on Him
• In 2009 Interview, Yahoo CEO Does Not Deny He Has a CS Degree, and Calls Himself an “Engineer” (Audio)
• Yahoo’s Board Will “Review” Resume Discrepancy of CEO
• How Did a Phantom CS Degree Get on CEO’s Bio in SEC Filings? Yahoo’s Not Saying.
• Yahoo’s Response on CEO’s Computer Science ResumeGate: “Inadvertent Error”
• Dan Loeb Alleges “Discrepancies” on Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s Resume Related to Computer Science Degree

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120508/exclusive-yahoo-director-in-charge-of-botched-ceo-vetting-to-step-down-from-board/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120507/ceo-apologizes-to-yahoos-but-will-the-mea-culpa-work-without-an-explanation-for-the-borked-bio-memo/ http://allthingsd.com/20120507/ceo-apologizes-to-yahoos-but-will-the-mea-culpa-work-without-an-explanation-for-the-borked-bio-memo/#comments Mon, 07 May 2012 23:59:45 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=204971

He’s sorry. Deeply regrets. Apologizes. Takes full responsibility for the unfortunate distraction to the people.

No, it’s not a scandal-ridden politician caught in some compromising position, but Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson talking about the hubbub created by the addition of a fake computer science degree on his bio.

This kind of move is, of course, PR 101, but it still took Yahoo several days after activist shareholder Daniel Loeb uncovered the resume problem, which the Silicon Valley Internet giant said was an “inadvertent error.”

In his new memo, which comes after a terse one on Friday, Thompson said he was upset by how the controversy has impacted the company.

“As I told you on Friday, the board is reviewing the issue and I will provide whatever they need from me. In the meantime, I want you to know how deeply I regret how this issue has affected the company and all of you,” he wrote. “We have all been working very hard to move the company forward, and this has had the opposite effect. For that, I take full responsibility, and I want to apologize to you.”

It is interesting to note that he said nothing in the new email about being actually sorry for the still-mysterious inaccuracy in his bio.

It was present since 2004 when he worked at eBay and also somehow got into the Yahoo regulatory filings after he was hired earlier this year.

Presumably, that information is to come after an investigation by Yahoo’s board, headed by independent director Fred Amoroso, which is proceeding now.

It will be announced officially tomorrow, but it is already in the works, as Thompson noted.

Earlier today, Loeb demanded all books and records about the circumstances of Thompson’s hiring and has made hay out of the issue.

To calm the story, said Thompson to his new troops: “I am hopeful that this matter will be concluded promptly.”

Unfortunately for him, that hope is probably also going to turn out to be inaccurate.

But read it for yourself. Here’s the internal memo that just went out to all Yahoo employees from beleaguered Thompson, which I obtained from the company.

Yahoos:

I wanted to share some additional thoughts with you related to the disclosure of my academic credentials.

As I told you on Friday, the board is reviewing the issue and I will provide whatever they need from me. In the meantime, I want you to know how deeply I regret how this issue has affected the company and all of you. We have all been working very hard to move the company forward, and this has had the opposite effect. For that, I take full responsibility, and I want to apologize to you.

In my note Friday, I said I would be focused on continuing to do what needs to get done. That’s because I feel I owe it to all of you to make sure that nothing disrupts the progress we’ve made in just a few short months due to all of your focus, commitment, and hard work. As you’ve heard me say many times, we have a tremendous business with incredible assets, and we can win by putting our customers first. The progress I shared with you in the first quarter should make clear that we intend to move fast and deliver on the potential of the business for our customers, shareholders, and all of you.

I know the board plans to conduct the review thoroughly and independently, and I respect that process. I am hopeful that this matter will be concluded promptly. But, in the meantime, we have a lot of work to do. We need to continue to act as one team to fulfill the potential of this great company and keep moving forward. You have my word that all my energy and attention will be on that mission.

Scott

RELATED POSTS:

• Yahoo’s Parting With Thompson Will Be for “Cause” (a.k.a. CSLie)
• Ross Levinsohn’s Yahoo Plan: Back to the Future
• Here’s New Yahoo CEO’s First Note to Troops! (The Leaking-Internal-Memos-to-ATD Policy Remains in Effect As Usual)
• Yahoo Officially Confirms ATD Report on CEO Changes and Proxy Settlement
• Meet the Man I Call “The Hair”: The Video Stylings of Yahoo’s Newest CEO Ross Levinsohn
• Will Thompson’s Ouster Mean a Yahoo-Facebook Patent Settlement Too?
• Exclusive: Yahoo’s Thompson Out; Levinsohn In; Board Settlement With Loeb Nears Completion
• Heidrick & Struggles Slaps Back at Thompson’s Yahoo in Blame Game Over ResuMess
• Is He In or Is He Out? Crunchtime for Scott Thompson at Yahoo.
• Not So Scott Free? Yahoo’s Other Big Shareholder — Cap Re — Leaning Toward Supporting Loeb Over Thompson ResuMess.
• Tech Nation’s Gunn Says She and Yahoo CEO Discussed Their CS Degrees Before 2009 Show (Video and Audio)
• Loeb Calls Again for Thompson Firing From Yahoo, as Former eBay Boss Supports Him
• Place Your Bets: Will Loeb Drop Another Bomb on Yahoo at Vegas Confab Later Today?
• Exclusive: Yahoo Director in Charge of Botched CEO Vetting to Step Down From Board
• CEO Says Sorry to Yahoos for Borked Bio “Distraction” — But Will Mea Culpa Work Without an Apology for Error? (Memo)
• Buffett Comments on Trust Issue in Yahoo CEO BioGate: “You’ve Got a Problem”
• Loeb Lobs Lawsuit, as Expected, at Yahoo’s Borked Bio Mess
• As Yahoo CEO Reaches Out to Top Staff, Board Meets to Weigh “Options” (I.E., Deciding Who Gets to Take the Borked Bio Blame)
• Yahoo Should Expect Incoming Lawsuit Lobbed by Loeb Tomorrow on CEO Hiring
• They Shoot Yahoo CEOs, Don’t They? But Not Without a Really Smoking Gun and a Much Stronger Board.
• Yahoo’s Thompson Asks Employees to “Stay Focused” — Except Not on Him
• In 2009 Interview, Yahoo CEO Does Not Deny He Has a CS Degree, and Calls Himself an “Engineer” (Audio)
• Yahoo’s Board Will “Review” Resume Discrepancy of CEO
• How Did a Phantom CS Degree Get on CEO’s Bio in SEC Filings? Yahoo’s Not Saying.
• Yahoo’s Response on CEO’s Computer Science ResumeGate: “Inadvertent Error”
• Dan Loeb Alleges “Discrepancies” on Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s Resume Related to Computer Science Degree

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120507/ceo-apologizes-to-yahoos-but-will-the-mea-culpa-work-without-an-explanation-for-the-borked-bio-memo/feed/ 0