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Annual "Worst CEO" List Released
angry tapir writes "Zynga's Mark Pincus made the annual 'Worst CEOs' list compiled by Dartmouth College professor Sydney Finkelstein. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Andrew Mason of Groupon received dishonorable mentions. Zuckerberg earned his dishonorable mention on the list partly due to his 'hoodie mentality.'"
The methodology behind the list combines three factors: the firms' financial performance including stock returns and cash flow; the extent to which the CEO has behaved responsibly; and strategic leadership and corporate governance.
Also, the CEO of Best Buy got the #1 worst ranking.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Meg Whitman...
http://www.businessworld.in/en/storypage/-/bw/who-are-the-worst-ceos-of-2012/679612.37489/page/-1
Where the hell is Elop? I would have thought that cratering the company you're running would count something towards being a bad CEO.
And shouldn't Ballmer at least rate a dishonorable mention?
:-P
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
My top three are all social media related. Imagine that.
1. Microsoft buys Yammer for $1.2 Billion
"Enterprise social network" -- a solution looking for a problem. This is almost as bad an idea as Ballmer's Skype acquisition in 2011.
2. Facebook buys Instagram for $715 Million
Zuckerman didn't even ask the board. Meanwhile users are leaving Instagram like someone set the company on fire. And they're still not profitable.
3. Zynga buys OMGPOP for $180 Million
Pincus thinks he's the next EA, while the entire company rots away under him.
There are a lot more (thinking rather pointedly of AMD, Apple, Samsung, Nokia), perhaps we can compile them all here.
This quote pretty much sums up management mentality for me: In criticising M.Pincus, Zynga's CEO, this was one of the criticisms; "Unclear why it was necessary to buy this company (makes “Draw Something”) instead of copying it". A professor of management is criticising a manager for doing something morally right...
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
And shouldn't Ballmer at least rate a dishonorable mention?
You won't see Balmer in the main annual lists, he is up for the Lifetime Achievement award...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I feel there have to be worse things than what is mentioned in the story. Things like demotivating your entire company by firing people the day before their promised stock vests, actually killing the company you're running, stealing a significant chunk of money or other assets, keeping the company alive only because of a massive bail-out, those are things I would expect to make the list.
What's actually on the list seems comparatively tame. Hoodie mentality, seriously? Do we really still value complying with dress codes that were set in a different era higher than actually creating a multi-billion dollar company?
Disclaimer: I work for Facebook, however, I imagine my opinion would be much the same if I didn't. Also, this is my personal opinion; not necessarily that of my employer.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Genuine question: which ones are seen to do a good job in these times? Who are the candidates?
Without a "good" reference, it is difficult to define "worst". Or is everyone bad since the tech sector have had some rough times?
Just sayin' he destroyed one of the best compiler brand assets at the time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Del_Yocam
Ballmer, Whitman, Fiorina, Elop for obvious reasons and every single oil company CEO and Director Board for pursuing some of the most short sighted and disastrous policies and ideas which will really hurt this planet in the long run.
The guy who ran BP should be handed over to Taliban. The same with the guy who runs Foxconn and Walmart if they don't change their offshoring, outsourcing and labor policies.
The Zynga / Facebook crowd does not deserve a mention, they made mistakes, they are yet to create a disaster.
Tat Tvam Asi
Or in this case, follow the ideology of the "Professor" in question. We like to think people who think themselves smart are above having agenda's. But are they?
I wonder how this guy DOES views Elop. Or indeed Nobuyuki Idei, the man who killed Sony. A managers manager, a man who had the shareholder firmly in mind. Who followed the tree factors that determined this list... AND ruined the company with it.
This "professor" dislikes the "hoodie" mentality, dislikes companies thinking their engineers are important when they should be worried about this quarters stock performance. So... it isn't that much of a leap to conclude this professor is of the Wallstreet business school, you know, the guys who gave us this wonderful robuust economy.
Are the mentioned CEO's bad leaders for their company OR did they just upset Wallstreet to much? ALWAYS question the source of a message, it tells you a lot about the message and how you should treat it. This list? Make up your own mind.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Why isn't Paul Polman, CEO of Unox not on the list?
Living is a horizontal fall
The demerit against Mark Pincus CEO of Zynga:
Another incompetent acquisition: OMGPOP for almost $200 million (4x revenue). Writedown of 50per cent of purchase price after 7 months. Unclear why it was necessary to buy this company (makes “Draw Something”) instead of copying it, since there are no barriers to entry.
So Business Week is unclear why a company decided to buy the competition instead of simply copying their product, all the while getting their pants sued off for copying someone else's game?
Really BW? Really? You don't think repeating the decisions that got you sued is a bad thing? What next? CEO of BP for their lack of oceanic lubrication in the past financial year?
Or libel, or slander, or whatever?
You won't see Balmer in the main annual lists,
because he's in a league of his own.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Where's Elop?
Didn't Steve Jobs catch grief for not wearing a suit all the time?...Didn't he have a hacker mentality?, that certainly ruined Apple's image, oh wait.....hoodies it is then.
http://m.washingtonpost.com/national/on-leadership/the-five-worst-ceos-of-2012/2012/12/18/0f353f14-4940-11e2-ad54-580638ede391_story.html
*We* can see he's lost the Wintel control to ArmAnd, but the people who compile these lists always do so in hindsight. Ballmer is still plausibly denying the failure with huge write-off, ramping up the price to the remaining captive customers and misdirections.
Likewise Elop, he's "the sun will come out tomorrow" man. Still able to do leasebacks, got $2 billion from MS etc. still able to make the failure deniable.
On the other hand Aubrey McClendon, well I read about him nearly 5 years ago, investing peronally alongside the company in obvious conflicts of interests, I got the impression he was borderline criminal. An Enron waiting to happen, but that was like 5 years ago!
So I think Tomi's arguments make sense and Nokia's demise is inevitable. When I heard they'd be making RT tablets, I just wonder why the Nokia board haven't acted yet. It must be screaming them in the face, even Cheasapeake acted, albeit late and only partial.
Questions:
1) Does anyone who reads Slashdot also read Australian Computerworld? Or is Computerworld for out-of-touch management types?
2) Was someone at Slashdot paid to give an Australian Computerworld link?
3) Is a list of only 5 bad CEOs sensible, when there are hundreds?
Clueless twats that know absolutely nothing about running multimillion dollar or multibillion dollar companies have decided that those who have, are the worst.
I'll wager that the utter asshats that did this list have never run a company of ANY kind, let alone a successful economic giant.
When Warren Buffet says a CEO is among the worst, that has some weight or validity. When nameless asshat spews click bait and blog spam, I say STFU!
If scale was ignored and it was just percentages, my company's CEO would win hands down against every person listed in that article. He went against everything and everyone else to make a disastrous decision that resulted in at least 1/8th of our gross income being wasted. He also researched and pushed a competing server replacement solution with friends of his, who happened to basically be scam artists, and I had to play with the prices and fight hard to get an actual, working solution in instead. Also, I'm quitting as soon as possible and I'm the sole IT worker so they're beyond screwed replacing me at this pay level. Approximately 1/3 of all employees here have quit for money and management reasons in the last 2 years. So yeah, he wins! And the lesson here is, there are much worse ones out there.
Since when is either Zynga or Groupon "a successful economic giant"?
Nowhere did I say that they were! I said that the people who created the list had "never run a company of ANY kind, let alone a successful economic giant." Please pay attention!
But, I'll also point out that Zynga's market cap, at this moment is JUST shy of $2 BILLION and Groupon's market cap is $3.4 BILLION. The bloggers that created this list have done what again? Did they ever earn massive VC funding? Did they ever take a company public? Did they ever run a loser like Groupon that just happened to generate $568 million in the third quarter of 2012?
These "worst CEOs" have done exactly those things. They have all taken ethereal concepts and turned them into billion dollar companies that are generating hundreds of millions of dollars per month and everyone else who hasn't made such accomplishments can STFU!
I wear a hoodie at least once a week. That's never stopped me from getting good performance appraisals. Maybe Mark's office is just cold?
Seriously. People skimming may think he included Zuckerberg because of, well, Zuckerberg is an ass himself... but actually it is because he didn't wear professional attire? Right guy, completely wrong reasons.
Sorry, but your should have put a period after " People skimming may think he included Zuckerberg."
He didn't. Zuckerberg did not make the list.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-leadership/the-five-worst-ceos-of-2012/2012/12/18/0f353f14-4940-11e2-ad54-580638ede391_story_1.html
Zuckerberg is apparently like Hitler-- any mention of him hijacks the thread, and all discussion of the actual content ceases.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
is at the top of my list of all time worst CEOs...
Karma: Bad
please don't feed the white supremacist knuckleheads
It makes me think you're an idiot.
The guy who compiled the list is Jewish (at least I'd guess so from the name). Maybe the whole thing is a red herring to trick us into falling for whatever you idiots think the Jewish conspiracy is trying to trick us into falling for.
I like Ballmer exactly where it is.
Now if only we could make Carly F. the CEO of Apple.
Reed Hastings gets my vote for most incompetent. Why that fuckhead hasn't been fired is a mystery. DVD by mail not only generates more revenue it has a much high profit margin and this idiot still wants to kill it.
Hugh Grant(Monsanto) is by far the most evil CEO.
Where are these awards for the various Public Service agencies in the world?