8 ms·

Sort-of off topic: That guy has nothing on some of the other infamous CEO career lies... take the ex-CEO of Lotus (former makers of 123, Lotus Notes, etc). He l

by smoody 14y ago

Sort-of off topic: That guy has nothing on some of the other infamous CEO career lies... take the ex-CEO of Lotus (former makers of 123, Lotus Notes, etc). He lied about being a fighter pilot, having a PhD, and being a black belt in tae kwon do. source: http://www.zdnet.com/news/background-of-lotus-chief-under-fire/95847 http://www.zdnet.com/news/background-of-lotus-chief-under-fi... I think people get to a point where they start to believe their made-up mythology. Or perhaps they reach a point where it's too late to turn back. That's what I learned while getting my PhD in Lying Studies at University of Fountainhead, anyway.

tomkarlo 14y ago
Or, the head of admissions at MIT: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-04-26-mit-admissions-dean-out_N.htm http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-04-26-mit-admiss... No question she was good at her job, but it's a real problem when you're in charge of any kind of hiring to ask your applicants to be honest if you're not honest yourself.
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  Maybe it isn't a problem, but actually something that makes her good at her job? I'd trust a long-time liar to recognize other liars better than an honest person, any day.
  - vijayr 14y ago
    by that logic, may be we should hire ex-cons for law enforcement? they'd probably make better cops than 'normal' people?
    - why-el 14y ago
      Not a very good analogy, as ex-cons already underwent punishment and hopefully some reflection. Also, if I follow your logic, then that will ruin Spielberg's Catch Me if You Can for me.
      - bmelton 14y ago
        Completely offtopic, and I don't mean anything negative about you when I say this, but I'm always interested in the response when people attribute a director to the success of a movie based on a book. Did you know that the movie was based on Frank Abagnale's book (also entitled "Catch Me If You Can", or did you just prefer Spielberg's version? Especially in this case, where the movie is so close to the book, it's questionable. Just like in Sin City, the adaptation is so true to its source material, if you liked one, you're pretty well assured of liking the other.
        why-el 14y ago
        Hey no problem, a fellow cinephile here. And yes I knew it was on a book but did not read it. I liked the movie for a whole set of reasons (For instance, Christopher Walken's performance) but reading the book would definitely have affected how I value the director's work. I had a similar discussion with my uncle, who is a writer and director, about another movie: The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo (The original version, not the American adaptation). My uncle read the books; I didn't. I really liked the movie, and found the plot rather satisfying to some degree, but my uncle hated it, and said the director simplified things to an alarming extent, losing all the interesting details that made the books successful. So I think reading the books is a good habit if one wants to judge the director's intention, but sometimes I just don't have time. Update: I reread your question, and I think you want to know if directors are taking too much credit which ought to go to the book writer? I think in this case we might disagree about the director's function, which I think goes far beyond the intricacies of the story.
        bmelton 14y ago
        Thanks for the reply. As for the clarification, I was more concerned with people attributing the derivative work with the credit of the movie moreso than the director on the whole. I probably only phrased it how I did since you used Spielberg's name directly. The thing I find irritating (on a grander scale, not pertaining to you, specifically) is when cases like this arise where the movie rides the success of the book. I get that it's probably specific to people who have read the book vs. people who haven't, but I'm usually interested enough to ask, as sometimes there are cases when directors take the movie to a level the source material didn't, just as there are times when a director is unable to take good source material and turn it into a good movie. Thanks again for the insight.
    - redorb 14y ago
      I think there is a very fine line between a criminal and a cop per say in mentality. Good cops will know what to look for in criminal behavior and good criminals will know how to look out for cops; not all cops - but I would say its a fine line between the best of both worlds. Could be the reason double agents are so valuable.
      - fleitz 14y ago
        The difference is a thin veneer of legitimacy.
    - carguy1983 14y ago
      The good ones are already doing consulting work for the cops, FBI, military, intelligence, etc. There are countless books and movies and news reports about this, from organized crime informants, document forgers, computer/network hackers, international espionage, heist masterminds... the list goes on and on. The majority of crooks - the 'ex-cons' you're talking about - are just shitty petty criminals or violent idiots, and get caught and punished. Why would anyone hire a shitty crook to do counter-intel against a job they failed at previously?
    - MaysonL 14y ago
      See White Collar Fraud: http://whitecollarfraud.blogspot.com http://whitecollarfraud.blogspot.com From the author's disclosure: "I am a convicted felon and a former CPA. As the criminal CFO of Crazy Eddie, I helped my cousin Eddie Antar and other members of his family mastermind one of the largest securities frauds uncovered during the 1980's. I committed my crimes in cold-blood for fun and profit, and simply because I could. If it weren't for the heroic efforts of the FBI, SEC, Postal Inspector's Office, US Attorney's Office, and class action plaintiff's lawyers who investigated, prosecuted, and sued me, I would still be the criminal CFO of Crazy Eddie today."
  - tomkarlo 14y ago
    It's a big problem when your job involves withdrawing acceptance letters if you find out they lied about their prior education history, which happens fairly regularly.
  - wisty 14y ago
    People always make this mistake. "Sure, she's a snake, but she'll be our snake". Yeah, right.
    - CaptainZapp 14y ago
      Pfizer's shareholders most certainly regret the day when the company thought Mary McLeod, their global head of HR, who was their snake, was a great hire. A most interesting, alas lengthy, read about the whole sordid affair and why it may be a bad idea to hire a snake (or a multitude of them) can be found here : http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2011/07/28/pfizer-jeff-kindler-shakeup/ http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2011/07/28/pfizer-jeff... [edit: grammar]
  - larrys 14y ago
    "I'd trust a long-time liar to recognize other liars better" Hmm. If that is the case then it pays to hire some liars soley to review applications. (After thoroughly vetting them of course and making sure they are not lying about lying to get the job.)
    - fabricode 14y ago
      Welcome to ABC, Inc. In these two cubicles we have our vetting department. One screener always tells the truth, while the other always tells a lie. If you could only ask one question... oh never mind.
  - neckbeard 14y ago
    "It's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in." -- Lyndon B. Johnson referring to J. Edgar Hoover.
  - Duff 14y ago
    Lying on a resume doesn't require any inordinate skill -- just loose ethical standards.
- alecbenzer 14y ago
  > No question she was good at her job Out of curiosity, why do you say so? Not that the dishonesty would make her necessarily bad at her job, but what made her good at it?
  - jlev 14y ago
    She understood the institute culture, and helped build a student cohort each year that reflected and preserved it. I still think it's a damn shame she had to leave. - MIT '07 & '10
  - tomkarlo 14y ago
    She picked me off the waitlist. Really - she was the Dean of Admissions for a very long time (I think she was at MIT for 28 years overall, something like that) and while I can't remember her personally any more, I know that she had a strong rep both inside the administration and in the related professional community as well. If you're going to be Dean of Admissions, I'd have to think MIT is one of the most prestigious schools in the country for that post, especially when you consider it doesn't allocate large quotas to legacies the way some other top schools do.
    - brandnewlow 14y ago
      Former Ivy Admissions officer who was at Princeton the year before she resigned from MIT. Elite College Admissions is a really strange scene. There are Masters degrees and other credentials that people earn to move up to deanship's, but the actual job itself is completely bureaucratic and mechanical in nature. There were people in my office who'd been there for 20 years and sure, they'd read a lot more applications than me, but they had basically the same exact job as I did. Read applications, visit schools, vote on students twice a year. So the concept of needing a fancy degree to do the job always seemed pretty funny.
    - alecbenzer 14y ago
      Well, while I do think the idea of giving priority to legacies is pretty stupid and give MIT credit for that, I have other problems with their admissions process (I'm admittedly a bit biased as an MIT reject -- though to be fair it would sound like you are too). I know a decent amount of people at MIT, and while some of them definitely deserve to be there, there are a lot of others that I think don't, and got in for what I think are pretty superficial reasons.
zeteo 14y ago
Makes you wonder about the evolutionary pressures at the top of the corporate food chain, doesn't it?
brudgers 14y ago
You always were one of my favorite students.
- rapind 14y ago
  smoody! brudgers! It's been too long man, let's catch up?
fleitz 14y ago
"It "gave us confidence," says Maj. Gen. Thomas L. Wilkerson, former commander of the Marine Corps Reserve, who increased purchases of Lotus Notes after meeting Papows. "Jeff was a Phantom driver just like me."" This is exactly why people lie, because it doesn't matter how well your software works, what matters is that the people buying it feel like you're on the same team. Whether the CEO is a fighter pilot or not should be immaterial to purchasing an MTA.
- seanp2k2 14y ago
  Another thing too: what does it matter if you lie about the degree if /you can do the work/ ? Sure, it's unethical and I'm pretty sure it's illegal to lie outright about stuff like that to potential employers / boards, but again, if you come out and say "hey, I lied about this, but judge me on my output and not on my credentials"...that's gotta be worth something. That said, Yahoo isn't doing great, and I'm sure people will point to this as one reason why :\
  - j2labs 14y ago
    While abilities are important, being able to trust someone is almost certainly more important.
  - fleitz 14y ago
    Yes, that's quintessentially the problem, Yahoo is looking for legitimacy while the company fails. Our system of governance places a huge value on these sorts of papers as it self fulfils the prophecy that the governance tells us. Our leaders cling to legitimacy by pieces of papers to excuse the poor results. I mean if the guy who could name all the shadows on the cave couldn't run the company, then obviously the crazy guy who keeps talking about the sun should never be allowed to run it, especially since he lied about being able name all the shadows. Let's put him in jail and find someone who really can name all the shadows and prove once and for all that naming the shadows is really really important.
  - pbreit 14y ago
    Lying matters at least a little bit, dontcha think?
ShabbyDoo 14y ago
Yeah. This is an uninteresting lie relative to the more grandiose ones told by other executives. He added "and Computer Science" but accurately stated the level of his degree and institution. Any evidence that he has added "and Computer Science" in the past? Perhaps this is just sloppiness on the part of whomever prepared the SEC filings? And, the CEO, busy with trying to right the ship, just signed off with only a brief review? Given that I've never heard of the college and that he actually obtained a bachelor's degree, it doesn't seem like a very interesting lie.
- jwco 14y ago
  Actually, I think this is an interesting lie for a different reason. Look at their no. 1 competitor, Google. They had a PhD in computer science as CEO and now a guy who well on his way to a PhD came up with an algorithm that, as far as I can tell, revolutionized search. Why did this Yahoo guy lie? Maybe he felt pressure to keep up with the Google guys, and thought a modest lie about a B.S. in Comp Sci would do the trick while going undetected. It might be sign of the times--that PhDs and PhD-equivalents are heading large companies. And a funny misread too--their 2nd foremost competitor in search was founded by a dude without a B.S. at all. Addressing your other points: I feel like a CEO should be aware of how he/she is being perceived and correct any mistakes about his/her record.
Fabimaru 14y ago
We had a nice one in France. A small criminal (convicted for fraud, theft, setting fire...) was hired as the director of a small airport. He pretended to be a aviation engineer, a former army pilot and to have taken part in many wars. Everyone was completely satisfied with his work during 3 months, when he was finally caught.
cromulent 14y ago
Bruno Sorrentino was briefly Telstra's head of Research (a very prestigious position in the day) but claimed a PhD in physics. However, his staff wanted to read his thesis, and couldn't find it. That's the problem with faking a PhD, I guess. http://www.coxhill.com/trlhistory/history/sorrentino.htm http://www.coxhill.com/trlhistory/history/sorrentino.htm

by smoody 14y ago

tomkarlo 14y ago

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

sliverstorm 14y ago
Maybe it isn't a problem, but actually something that makes her good at her job? I'd trust a long-time liar to recognize other liars better than an honest person, any day.
- vijayr 14y ago
  by that logic, may be we should hire ex-cons for law enforcement? they'd probably make better cops than 'normal' people?
  - why-el 14y ago
    Not a very good analogy, as ex-cons already underwent punishment and hopefully some reflection. Also, if I follow your logic, then that will ruin Spielberg's Catch Me if You Can for me.
    - bmelton 14y ago
      Completely offtopic, and I don't mean anything negative about you when I say this, but I'm always interested in the response when people attribute a director to the success of a movie based on a book. Did you know that the movie was based on Frank Abagnale's book (also entitled "Catch Me If You Can", or did you just prefer Spielberg's version? Especially in this case, where the movie is so close to the book, it's questionable. Just like in Sin City, the adaptation is so true to its source material, if you liked one, you're pretty well assured of liking the other.
      - why-el 14y ago
        Hey no problem, a fellow cinephile here. And yes I knew it was on a book but did not read it. I liked the movie for a whole set of reasons (For instance, Christopher Walken's performance) but reading the book would definitely have affected how I value the director's work. I had a similar discussion with my uncle, who is a writer and director, about another movie: The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo (The original version, not the American adaptation). My uncle read the books; I didn't. I really liked the movie, and found the plot rather satisfying to some degree, but my uncle hated it, and said the director simplified things to an alarming extent, losing all the interesting details that made the books successful. So I think reading the books is a good habit if one wants to judge the director's intention, but sometimes I just don't have time. Update: I reread your question, and I think you want to know if directors are taking too much credit which ought to go to the book writer? I think in this case we might disagree about the director's function, which I think goes far beyond the intricacies of the story.
        bmelton 14y ago
        Thanks for the reply. As for the clarification, I was more concerned with people attributing the derivative work with the credit of the movie moreso than the director on the whole. I probably only phrased it how I did since you used Spielberg's name directly. The thing I find irritating (on a grander scale, not pertaining to you, specifically) is when cases like this arise where the movie rides the success of the book. I get that it's probably specific to people who have read the book vs. people who haven't, but I'm usually interested enough to ask, as sometimes there are cases when directors take the movie to a level the source material didn't, just as there are times when a director is unable to take good source material and turn it into a good movie. Thanks again for the insight.
  - redorb 14y ago
    I think there is a very fine line between a criminal and a cop per say in mentality. Good cops will know what to look for in criminal behavior and good criminals will know how to look out for cops; not all cops - but I would say its a fine line between the best of both worlds. Could be the reason double agents are so valuable.
    - fleitz 14y ago
      The difference is a thin veneer of legitimacy.
  - carguy1983 14y ago
    The good ones are already doing consulting work for the cops, FBI, military, intelligence, etc. There are countless books and movies and news reports about this, from organized crime informants, document forgers, computer/network hackers, international espionage, heist masterminds... the list goes on and on. The majority of crooks - the 'ex-cons' you're talking about - are just shitty petty criminals or violent idiots, and get caught and punished. Why would anyone hire a shitty crook to do counter-intel against a job they failed at previously?
  - MaysonL 14y ago
    See White Collar Fraud: http://whitecollarfraud.blogspot.com http://whitecollarfraud.blogspot.com From the author's disclosure: "I am a convicted felon and a former CPA. As the criminal CFO of Crazy Eddie, I helped my cousin Eddie Antar and other members of his family mastermind one of the largest securities frauds uncovered during the 1980's. I committed my crimes in cold-blood for fun and profit, and simply because I could. If it weren't for the heroic efforts of the FBI, SEC, Postal Inspector's Office, US Attorney's Office, and class action plaintiff's lawyers who investigated, prosecuted, and sued me, I would still be the criminal CFO of Crazy Eddie today."
- tomkarlo 14y ago
  It's a big problem when your job involves withdrawing acceptance letters if you find out they lied about their prior education history, which happens fairly regularly.
- wisty 14y ago
  People always make this mistake. "Sure, she's a snake, but she'll be our snake". Yeah, right.
  - CaptainZapp 14y ago
    Pfizer's shareholders most certainly regret the day when the company thought Mary McLeod, their global head of HR, who was their snake, was a great hire. A most interesting, alas lengthy, read about the whole sordid affair and why it may be a bad idea to hire a snake (or a multitude of them) can be found here : http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2011/07/28/pfizer-jeff-kindler-shakeup/ http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2011/07/28/pfizer-jeff... [edit: grammar]
- larrys 14y ago
  "I'd trust a long-time liar to recognize other liars better" Hmm. If that is the case then it pays to hire some liars soley to review applications. (After thoroughly vetting them of course and making sure they are not lying about lying to get the job.)
  - fabricode 14y ago
    Welcome to ABC, Inc. In these two cubicles we have our vetting department. One screener always tells the truth, while the other always tells a lie. If you could only ask one question... oh never mind.
- neckbeard 14y ago
  "It's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in." -- Lyndon B. Johnson referring to J. Edgar Hoover.
- Duff 14y ago
  Lying on a resume doesn't require any inordinate skill -- just loose ethical standards.
alecbenzer 14y ago
> No question she was good at her job Out of curiosity, why do you say so? Not that the dishonesty would make her necessarily bad at her job, but what made her good at it?
- jlev 14y ago
  She understood the institute culture, and helped build a student cohort each year that reflected and preserved it. I still think it's a damn shame she had to leave. - MIT '07 & '10
- tomkarlo 14y ago
  She picked me off the waitlist. Really - she was the Dean of Admissions for a very long time (I think she was at MIT for 28 years overall, something like that) and while I can't remember her personally any more, I know that she had a strong rep both inside the administration and in the related professional community as well. If you're going to be Dean of Admissions, I'd have to think MIT is one of the most prestigious schools in the country for that post, especially when you consider it doesn't allocate large quotas to legacies the way some other top schools do.
  - brandnewlow 14y ago
    Former Ivy Admissions officer who was at Princeton the year before she resigned from MIT. Elite College Admissions is a really strange scene. There are Masters degrees and other credentials that people earn to move up to deanship's, but the actual job itself is completely bureaucratic and mechanical in nature. There were people in my office who'd been there for 20 years and sure, they'd read a lot more applications than me, but they had basically the same exact job as I did. Read applications, visit schools, vote on students twice a year. So the concept of needing a fancy degree to do the job always seemed pretty funny.
  - alecbenzer 14y ago
    Well, while I do think the idea of giving priority to legacies is pretty stupid and give MIT credit for that, I have other problems with their admissions process (I'm admittedly a bit biased as an MIT reject -- though to be fair it would sound like you are too). I know a decent amount of people at MIT, and while some of them definitely deserve to be there, there are a lot of others that I think don't, and got in for what I think are pretty superficial reasons.

zeteo 14y ago

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

brudgers 14y ago

You always were one of my favorite students.

rapind 14y ago
smoody! brudgers! It's been too long man, let's catch up?

fleitz 14y ago

"It "gave us confidence," says Maj. Gen. Thomas L. Wilkerson, former commander of the Marine Corps Reserve, who increased purchases of Lotus Notes after meeting Papows. "Jeff was a Phantom driver just like me."" This is exactly why people lie, because it doesn't matter how well your software works, what matters is that the people buying it feel like you're on the same team. Whether the CEO is a fighter pilot or not should be immaterial to purchasing an MTA.

seanp2k2 14y ago
Another thing too: what does it matter if you lie about the degree if /you can do the work/ ? Sure, it's unethical and I'm pretty sure it's illegal to lie outright about stuff like that to potential employers / boards, but again, if you come out and say "hey, I lied about this, but judge me on my output and not on my credentials"...that's gotta be worth something. That said, Yahoo isn't doing great, and I'm sure people will point to this as one reason why :\
- j2labs 14y ago
  While abilities are important, being able to trust someone is almost certainly more important.
- fleitz 14y ago
  Yes, that's quintessentially the problem, Yahoo is looking for legitimacy while the company fails. Our system of governance places a huge value on these sorts of papers as it self fulfils the prophecy that the governance tells us. Our leaders cling to legitimacy by pieces of papers to excuse the poor results. I mean if the guy who could name all the shadows on the cave couldn't run the company, then obviously the crazy guy who keeps talking about the sun should never be allowed to run it, especially since he lied about being able name all the shadows. Let's put him in jail and find someone who really can name all the shadows and prove once and for all that naming the shadows is really really important.
- pbreit 14y ago
  Lying matters at least a little bit, dontcha think?

ShabbyDoo 14y ago

Yeah. This is an uninteresting lie relative to the more grandiose ones told by other executives. He added "and Computer Science" but accurately stated the level of his degree and institution. Any evidence that he has added "and Computer Science" in the past? Perhaps this is just sloppiness on the part of whomever prepared the SEC filings? And, the CEO, busy with trying to right the ship, just signed off with only a brief review? Given that I've never heard of the college and that he actually obtained a bachelor's degree, it doesn't seem like a very interesting lie.

jwco 14y ago
Actually, I think this is an interesting lie for a different reason. Look at their no. 1 competitor, Google. They had a PhD in computer science as CEO and now a guy who well on his way to a PhD came up with an algorithm that, as far as I can tell, revolutionized search. Why did this Yahoo guy lie? Maybe he felt pressure to keep up with the Google guys, and thought a modest lie about a B.S. in Comp Sci would do the trick while going undetected. It might be sign of the times--that PhDs and PhD-equivalents are heading large companies. And a funny misread too--their 2nd foremost competitor in search was founded by a dude without a B.S. at all. Addressing your other points: I feel like a CEO should be aware of how he/she is being perceived and correct any mistakes about his/her record.

Fabimaru 14y ago

We had a nice one in France. A small criminal (convicted for fraud, theft, setting fire...) was hired as the director of a small airport. He pretended to be a aviation engineer, a former army pilot and to have taken part in many wars. Everyone was completely satisfied with his work during 3 months, when he was finally caught.

cromulent 14y ago

Bruno Sorrentino was briefly Telstra's head of Research (a very prestigious position in the day) but claimed a PhD in physics. However, his staff wanted to read his thesis, and couldn't find it. That's the problem with faking a PhD, I guess. http://www.coxhill.com/trlhistory/history/sorrentino.htm http://www.coxhill.com/trlhistory/history/sorrentino.htm