So this is the story I cant stop refreshing pages about this week. Yahoos CEO, a guy named Scott Thompson whos only been in the job since January, has a bio floating around in SEC filings and on the company website that says he holds a bachelors degree in computer science and accounting from Stonehill College. Except Stonehill doesnt seem to think thats true. They didnt even offer a computer science major back when Thompson was a student there in the late 70s. He apparently has an accounting degree, full stop, and thats it.
This came out Thursday (May 3rd) via a letter from Dan Loeb at Third Point, the hedge fund thats been trying to get board seats at Yahoo for months and has clearly been digging through everything Thompson has ever put his name on. Its the kind of opposition research that would feel almost admirable if it wasnt so obviously a knife aimed at getting board seats. Loeb didnt just casually mention the degree thing either, he put it in writing to the board, on the record, which is not a subtle move from a guy whos been trying to get a seat at the table since February.
Im not going to pretend I have some grand theory about what this means for Yahoo as a company, because honestly Yahoo has had about four CEOs in the time Ive been running this blog and Ive mostly stopped tracking whos in charge over there. Carol Bartz got fired by phone call last September, remember that? A phone call, while she was traveling. Yahoo executive turnover is basically a running joke at this point, and this is just the latest, weirder chapter in it.
What actually gets me about this story isnt the corporate politics part, its the sheer mundane-ness of the lie. A computer science degree isnt even that impressive a credential to fake. Its not like he claimed he invented something or won some award that didnt exist. He just added a line to his bio at some point, or someone did it for him and he never bothered to correct it, and then it sat there through multiple SEC filings and years of press releases, and apparently zero people at Yahoo, a company literally built by two Stanford computer science guys, thought to double check it.
Ive spent enough time cleaning up my own LinkedIn over the years to know how these little exaggerations creep in and just never get cleaned up. I once had a job title on there that was technically accurate but made it sound like I managed a whole team when really it was just me and one intern for about eight months. Fixed that eventually, but it sat wrong for way longer than it should have. Most of us dont have SEC filings though. Most of us dont get caught by an activist hedge fund with a grudge and a legal team on retainer.
Yahoos board has apparently put together some kind of committee to look into it, which is corporate-speak for "we are extremely aware this looks bad and we have no idea yet what were going to do about it." My guess, and its just a guess, is this doesnt end quietly. You dont get a hedge fund manager to publicly call out your CEOs diploma in a filed letter unless the plan is to keep pushing until somebody with a board seat blinks first.
Anyway. Im not bringing this up because I think anyone reading a tech blog in early May 2012 hasnt already seen it on every other site this week, Im sure you have. Im bringing it up because I think its a genuinely good little case study in how a small, boring, easily-checked fact turns into a full blown crisis the moment somebody with an incentive to check finally does. Somewhere theres an HR person or a comms staffer from years back who typed "computer science" into a bio without double checking, and now its a headline follow up story on three different newswires.
Diploma verification is not exciting work. Nobody wants to be the person whose job is confirming that other peoples college transcripts say what they claim. But its the kind of thing that only matters the one time it goes wrong, and then it matters an enormous amount, all at once, in public, with a hedge fund manager cc'ing your entire board. Worth keeping in mind next time youre updating your own bio page. Mine included, apparently.