Yahoo CEO Wrongly Claimed To Have Degree In Computer Science

jmcbain writes "Scott Thompson, Yahoo!'s CEO who was hired on January 4 of this year, was found to have lied about his CS degree from Stone Hill College. Investigation from an activist shareholder revealed that his degree was actually in accounting, and apparently Thompson had been going with this lie since the time he served as president of PayPal's payments unit."

Comments

Re:Reminds me of Disney

[hey!]

Actually, my experience with actual CPA's has been that they're a pleasure to work with. For one thing they file kick-ass bug reports. A good accountant knows how difficult it is to track a problem down, because a lot of what they do amounts to financial debugging.

The *really* good accountants I've known also understand something important, which is the limitations of their discipline. That's probably a prerequisite for being really good at any profession, but accountants generally are more aware of the limitations of their profession than, say, lawyers are. So I think the problem is more likely managers thinking they're accountants than vice versa.

It's understandable, because management is an interdisciplinary field in which the only guarantee of success would be a working time machine. Managers out of their depth tend to grasp at straws (like anyone would); sometimes its accounting, other times it is marketing, other times it is quality control. I think a great manager would know the limits of the management discipline, and focus on hiring great people and keeping them working together.

Anyhow, the accountants I've worked with have been terrific, and I've learned a lot from them; so whenever I hear "accountant" casually used as a pejorative, I like to speak up.

Re:I would've went with accounting

[Billly Gates]

Sadly that is the problem with Corporate America today.

You laugh it off, but why do you think corporate America still prefers IE 6 & XP and only looks at IT as a cost center and sales as profit centers and everything else as a un necessary cost?

The reason why is accountants run the show and follow GAAP rules and know little about the business. Wall Street just wants someone to fudge numbers so they can pump and then short the stock within a 6 - 9 week window.

Accountants make the claim I made x amount of money therefore I can raise your stock price etc.

Is there any CEOs who were former engineers or designers left? A CEO with an IT background would be actually nice for an IT company! Who would ahve thought!