Mock, Paper, Scissors

As part of a law suit here in Silicon Valley, via the emails of various CEOs, we have learned that titans of industry–those Galtian overlords–conspired to keep engineers from switching companies and presumably receiving higher wages. Instead of letting the invisible hand of the market determine the going rate for engineering talent, they had a Gentlemen’s Agreement to not steal employees from each other.

The inner workings of Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, and others are in the public spotlight.

Steve Jobs, who was a world-class asshole, which might be the secret to being such a gifted CEO, threatened a patent lawsuit against Palm if they did not stop poaching Apple engineers. Jobs wrote to then-Palm CEO Ed Colligan:

I’m sure you realize the asymmetry in the financial resources of our respective companies.”

Which is about as close to making him an offer he cannot refuse as you can get. Seriously, when the company with the highest value in the world tells you about its deep pockets while threatening litigation, you better believe that you’ve been warned. Next thing: a horse head on your pillow.

Eric Schmidt of Google (motto: Don’t Be Evil) of course was evil: Google’s former senior staffing strategist Amnon Geshuri informs Schmidt that a recruiter, having pursued an Apple employee, will be “terminated within the hour.”

Schmidt seems to have realized that all of these gentlemen’s agreements were probably unethical and potentially illegal. But being Eric Schmidt, instead of stopping the practice, he ordered everyone to quit leaving a paper trail, “less the company be sued later.” So, in short, a cover-up to a conspiracy. Nice work, Nixon. Can you recommend a plumber?

Likewise, Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini doesn’t want the handshake agreements to be “broadly known.” This pretty clearly indicates that these guys knew what they were doing was wrong, if not illegal and in a delicate knife-in-the-back twist of irony, declaring that there be no paper trail is now in the paper trail.

Yes, these CEOs are the same guys who squash any attempt to collectively bargain, who fight any regulations that might interfere with the alleged free-markets.

Now if only we had an Attorney General who was amongst the breathing, there might be charges and a highly entertaining frog-march of the elites to the pokey. But we don’t. We also don’t have a media that is covering this story. The business press isn’t covering this story, and if you want to consider how it could be that wages did not improve with the economy, here is one part of that puzzle. But the press is covering the vital issue of Beyoncé lip-syncing and the ever-present threat of celebrity side-boob.

The Verge has the entire collection of documents up in a gallery. It’s infuriating, but it is really worth reading.

San Jose: 21 people treated for burns after firewalk at Tony Robbins appearance

As ‘Spoon would say, “I thought he was dead.”

People are still falling for this grift?

…make a series about Silicon Valley:

The projects are real. The dreams are real. But will Bravo’s upcoming reality television show about Silicon Valley startup culture capture the true toil of entrepreneurs trying to improve life through online apps and programs?

Right there I can say this is doomed. Anyone who lives or works in Silicon Valley will tell you up front: watching engineers write code or struggle with a problem is boring. Watching paint dry probably has more action. But anyway, let’s continue.

“It’s even worse than I thought it would be,” said Sarah Lacy, a writer who founded technology news website PandoDaily. “Every feedback I’ve received is they are entirely scripting the show.”

I think that they would have to, otherwise it is about watching a bunch of guys (mostly and mostly badly groomed) staring into a screen, eating Captain Crunch, drinking Pepsi, and crashing in the wee hours of the morning, waking up, sniffing their shirts and starting in again. I won’t bore you with how I know these things.

Though it’s tentatively titled “Silicon Valley,” crews have been regularly spotted in San Francisco, including a hilltop Castro district mansion dubbed the Villa by its residents. Complete with a pool in the backyard, its occupants include English siblings Hermione and Ben Way. They are two of five confirmed entrepreneurs who appear in the show.

That group has also been seen partying at a house on Scott Street in Alamo Square known as Factory Zero. The cast was last spotted with about half a dozen friends and Bravo’s cameras among the 250 people attending the Winery SF’s Fourth of July barbecue party on Treasure Island.

Yeah, the heart of Silicon Valley is in the Castro.

The show, expected to air late this year, is being produced by Jesse Ignjatovic and Evan Prager of Den of Thieves. Their production company is best known for producing the annual MTV Video Music Awards, but it was also behind former 49ers star Terrell Owens’ three-season reality show on VH1.

Also listed as executive producer is Randi Zuckerberg – sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Her brother wasn’t happy about his portrayal in the hit film “The Social Network.” So many in the valley were surprised when she announced in April her role in a show said to be inspired by the film’s success.

OK, so they saw the wild Standford co-ed party scene in the movie and thought that this was what life with engineers was like?

Lacy, who’s covered tech since the first bubble, said the show appears to be nothing like she’s witnessed.

“The problem is that this is people living in a grand mansion, doing yoga in their backyard, pretending to be the next Mark Zuckerberg,” she said.

Tech writer and author Gary Rivlin, who has regularly covered Silicon Valley, said the reality is that the people working at the most interesting companies live the most uninteresting lives.

“They are their computer till 2 a.m., they gobble up some cereal and soda and then crash,” he said.

Told ya so!

None of that, though, makes for entertaining television. But bikini-clad women and bottles of vodka at a pool party do.

Told ya so!

As for “Silicon Valley,” the show’s crew has been spotted in the actual Silicon Valley too: Late last month, they filmed at Palo Alto restaurant Calafia.

Told ya so!

Maybe it’s not too late for Bravo to option Brisket^®‘s show once it is cancelled on Lifetime. I think that they have the same corporate owners.

(SFGate)

There is a club. You are not in it.

Silicon Valley has been on the edge of our collective seats this week waiting for the Fates to determine, well, the fate of Yahoo! CEO Scott Thompson, he of the mysteriously awarded CS Masters Degree from a college that doesn’t offer one, at least not at that time that his resume claims that he earned it.

Anyway, in the land of credentials (it is common here for people to state at the beginning of meetings their colleges, degrees, and honor society memberships, and I wish I was kidding about that) to have someone rise in the ranks without a degree is not unusual (see Faceberg, Mark or Jobs, Steve or even Ellison, Larry), and is somewhat an expected archetype. However, having someone rise in the ranks with a wholly fictitious resume is somewhat unusual.

Now, if Yahoo! was a small and stable tech company, I suppose this story of false credentials would probably fly under the radar, but Yahoo! is anything but small and stable. It is still (amazingly) the most visited web portal on the internet, and even while it is understood by many to be in serious trouble, it is still a billion dollar company. One would think that when hiring a new CEO that someone, somewhere, might have the job of vetting the candidates.

Maybe the thinking is that Thompson who came to Yahoo! from PayPal (a wholly-owned subsidiary of eBay) was already vetted by his previous employer, and I suppose that he was, so why bother vet him again? After all, if (then eBay and now HP CEO) Meg Whitman hired him, well, he’s gotta be as good as Skype. (Meg bought Skype but did not buy the intellectual property rights, or apparently the source code… eBay sold Skype–or whatever it was that Meg bought–back to Skype’s founders and overall lost tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars on the deal after she left eBay.)

Anyway, since it was revealed about a week ago that Thompson’s credentials are anything but real, he’s apologized multiple times to the remaining Yahoo! employees (he’d already laid of 2,000 of ‘em), his apologists have issued numerous explanations (including that an executive recruitment company inserted the degree and he never noticed), and the media has had numerous, thoughtful “conversations” about resumé padding. No one has used the ugly words, lied or liar. Mistake, scandal, I swear I even saw boo-boo; the language has been gentle.

Scott Thompson is a liar. He lied about an easily fact-checked degree on his resume, which makes him an idiot as well as a liar. The people who vetted his candidacy are idiots. They should be walked out the door, too. For cause.

And before we get into the padding a resume vs. lying ethical discussion, I think that there is a world of difference between including the unpaid internship working for your father and declaring you have a degree from an accredited university. Let’s not go there. There is no way to spin it to his advantage.

So there is a strange and terrible object-lesson to this story. Someone who managed to lie his way into the boardrooms and upper echelons of corporate America, literally climbed into the 1% got caught in what I can only think would be a career-killing lie, and he was not walked out the door immediately as you or I would be. (True story: I saw know someone who was fired for claiming to know Power Point. This person is just as credentialed as Scott Thompson and clearly more honest, so in theory s/he could be running Yahoo!)

I don’t wish ill will on any working stiff. Scott Thompson will fail upwards. His departure press release doesn’t mention it, but I’m sure he got a handsome golden parachute for his less than 6 months tenure (January 4, 2012 to today). Thompson’s family will never know hunger or insecurity. He will find himself at another company or more likely at a hedge fund or venture capital fund; maybe Meg will hire him to work at HP.

UPDATE 1: Yahoo! has named an interim CEO, Ross Levinsohn, who helped steer (Fox) News Corp’s acquisition of MySpace. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

*Carol Bartz was the previous CEO of Yahoo! who was fired over the phone in 2011.

Sorry for the absence, taking care of some chores today. As per my tradition I take a walk and scatter wild flower seeds in the empty lots and other wild places around my neighborhood; some years I’m just feeding the birds, other years a thousand poppies bloom. Anyway, it’s a nice day for a walk, and as my Dad always said, leave the campground better than you found it.

…Professionals do snark.

(Hat tip: Daring Fireball)

From the local fishwrap:

The Google (GOOG) executive who deftly used social media to spark the Egyptian revolution arrived for the first time where he said he belongs — Silicon Valley — imploring a group of young Internet entrepreneurs Thursday to “change the world” with their next invention.

He did that? Really? So all those years of a repressive regime had nothing to do with it? All of those people were just waiting for some yahoo from The Google (heh) to step in and lead a revolution?

(Mercury News)

From today’s fish wrap here in Silicon Valley:

There is a kink in the hose of prosperity.

Sweet Jebus. The prosperity hose has a kink.

The other day, when Mock, Paper, Scissors was linked at Crooks and Liars (thank you, Batocchio), one of the other blogs linked, The Political Cat, concluded their post with:

And one thing [The GOP] should remember, no one ever gets rich in a vacuum. Corporations should especially be concerned about that. If there is no middle class because we have all become poverty stricken serfs, who is going to buy their product? No one, that is who, and as we spiral into the poverty they are imposing on us, their gravy train ends.

Which is a fine bit of writing, but it comes a bit too late.

(more…)

LIAR!

…one percent, so let’s keep some perspective about that employment number. As the NYTimes tell us:

The jobless rate has not fallen substantially this year, largely because employers have barely added enough workers to absorb the people just entering the labor force. And even if the economy suddenly expands and starts adding 208,000 jobs a month — as it did in its best year this decade — it would still take 12 years to close the gap between the growing number of American workers and the total available jobs, according to the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project.

… Given all this, President Obama has tried to recast his Asia trip as a jobs mission.

And so he is traveling to Asia with a large contingency of representatives from Corporate America. One of the White House aides says that they would NOT visit Bangalore, India, which is synonymous with offshoring ‘merikan jobs, so gee, thank you President Carebearfor avoiding that symbol. Damn brave of you.

I’m betting that some of these Corporate types are actually scouting for outsourcing opportunities while they are over there. I hope that they release the list of companies that are represented in this trip so we can keep an eye on what they end up doing over the next year or two.

San Jose Mercury News

Ho, ho, ho! Now she done stepped in it and tracked it in the igloo snow palace! Mooselini, the chillbilly grifter and half-time gubnor of Alaskastan used the awesome power of the Facebook (her favorite news source) to give an endorsement to the creator of the demonic sheep, failed HP CEO Carly Fire ‘Em All Fiorina in her quest to unseat Barbara Boxer as a US Senator.

Let’s shake it up in California!
I’d like to tell you about a Commonsense Conservative running for office in California this year. She grew up in a modest home with a school teacher dad, worked her way through several colleges, and then entered an arena where few women had tread. Through a combination of hard work, perseverance, and common sense, she proved the naysayers wrong to reach the top of her field, where she led with distinction – facing hard truths, making tough decisions, and showing real leadership through a rocky transition period. Where others had failed, her company had weathered the storm and settled on a stronger new foundation.

Her name is Carly Fiorina, and I’m proud to endorse her for U.S. Senate.

… California is still Reagan Country, and Carly promises her “Reagan Conservative” values will be put to good use for her state and for our great nation. Shaking it up in California is long overdue. Let’s help Carly do it!

It seems that the Cali Teabaggers, after hiding under tables when Mooselini threatened them with an earthquake from their fire-god Ronald Reagan, got themselves up, dusted off and fired back using the Facebook’s awesome fire-back technology! They prefer the long-shot teabagging candidate Chuck DeVore, and they told Mooselini so:

She supported the Wall Street bailouts.
She supported Cap and Trade.
She supported the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayer…. See More

And then there’s this…

Sarah! We love you, girl, for many reasons (faith, no-nonsense conservatism, etc.) but how did you come to this??? Who pressured you to back Fiorina? Just don’t get it, Sarah. Not at all. Chuck DeVore is the real deal. You’d know that if you did your homework.

…and let’s not forget this…

CARLY FIORINA IS PRO ISLAM!!! BAD BUSINESS Dealing where she sold to IRAN and bribed her way into bad business in MOSCOW and this is who you want as a conservative senator!!? Sarah Palin you have lost your mind along the way or maybe you didn’t! None the less you showed your colors and now you’ve lost your support with the tea party! Your a rino!

Ouch! That’s gonna leave a mark. So Mooselini did what she had to do, which was use the awesome update power of the Facebook to update her detractors!

Update: I’d like to add a few things about my Carly endorsement because some reaction right out of the chute calls for more information:

Carly has been endorsed by the National Right to Life, the California Pro-Life Council, and the Susan B. Anthony List. She is pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, pro-military, and pro-strict border security and against amnesty. She is against Obamacare and will vote to repeal it and prevent the government takeover of private companies and industries. Carly is also a strong supporter of the Second Amendment. Like me, she is a member of the NRA, has a 100% NRA rating, and she and her husband are gun owners. She is pro-energy development and believes as I do in an all-of-the-above approach to energy independence. She is against cap and tax. And most importantly, Carly is the only conservative in the race who can beat Barbara Boxer. That’s no RINO. That’s a winner.

Except these endorsements are not exactly true, either, but it’s Mooselini, so what did you expect? Accuracy? Truthiness?

Yup, Carly Fire ‘Em All Fiorina is about as popular as a sneeze while peeing with the Teabaggers, moderates, and liberals of California. Even Mooselini cannot changey-hopey that reality.

I get the most amazing spam:

The U.S. needs to be more welcoming of startup founders, no matter where they were born. But the illegal immigration debate is so politically sensitive that startup founders, who create tons of jobs, get lumped in with migrant farm workers and the discussion sort of comes to a crashing halt there. Now is the time for us to rally, though, and avoid this type of situation. There is real momentum behind the Startup Visa Act, and there’s a realistic chance that, for once, our government can do something to actually help the innovation ecosystem in Silicon Valley.

On Thursday 20 or so Silicon Valley entrepreneurs will travel to Washington D.C. to talk with government officials about the Act, introduced last week by Senator John Kerry (D-MA) and Richard Lugar (R-IN), and drum up more support. Venture capitalist Dave McClure is organizing the trip.

The Startup Visa Act of 2010 would create a two year visa for immigrant entrepreneurs who are able to raise a minimum of $250,000, with $100,000 coming from a qualified U.S. angel or venture investor. After two years, if the immigrant entrepreneur is able to create five or more jobs (not including their children or spouse), attract an additional $1 million in investment, or produce $1 million in revenues, he or she will become a legal resident.

And after those five jobs are made, the operation moves to a low-labor cost country. The End.

Racism?

Now then, wouldn’t you think someone, somewhere at HP might have tested this software? I’m always sort of amazed at what passes through the maze at big software companies and is approved to ship. But this seems absolutely rock-bottom bad. Imagine the bad press that this will get?

So does a bad QA plan a racist make? Probably not. But it speaks volumes about who HP thinks their users are, and certainly implies who they think their users are NOT.

So racist? Not so much, but unthinking (white privilege), you betcha.

One of our erstwhile candidates for Governor here in the broke Californiastan is a former silicon valley CEO, Meg Whitman, who like most silicon valley CEOs has an incredible sense of entitlement and a healthy ego. Having dipped her toe into politics upon retirement from eBay by helping Grandpa Walnuts and the Grifter lose the golden state, and having only sporadically voted herself, eMeg decided that she was fit for the top job.

So she had a meet and greet with other high-powered silicon valley women, and it didn’t go well.

Whitman “gave her whole spiel,” emphasizing that she is “passionate but impartial,” a cool head. After a while, the candidate “got into the gay stuff.” One guest, a lesbian who is married and has two children, told Whitman she’d heard that the candidate had voted for Proposition 8.

Whitman, who had described herself earlier as objective, admitted she had voted for Prop. 8. She said that decision had to do with both her religion – Presbyterian – and her emotions.

“What happened to the objective CEO lady?” asked her challenger. “Now you’re emotional. … You’re all objective about everything; this issue you talk about emotions.”

Now imagine this scene for a moment: a silicon valley master of the universe, someone who figuratively (and literally) surrounded herself with yes men her entire career and has an unshakeable belief in her own press gets confronted in a public setting. I’m predicting a silent eMeg blinked a lot, while trying to get her circuits back, and hoping no one saw the Blue Screen.

To the questioner, Whitman’s blaming her vote on her religion didn’t make sense. “I’m also Catholic; that’s not going to fly for me. … ‘I have children who are unprotected. It’s a matter of legal rights. It’s a legal issue. I pay taxes just like you. Why do you get more rights than I do?’ ”

The discussion was civil, said the questioner, who admitted, “I was testy. She was not. … When Whitman said, ‘You know, I just wish we could have one term for everything: civil unions,’ I said, ‘Bingo, sold, I’ll take it.’ ”

Under a system like that, governments would grant civil licenses only. It would be up to individual churches to decide who they would marry.

Now, of course, her campaign staff is scrambling to deny everything. You see, here in California, the GOP does the Bataan Death March every election cycle. The closer you are to absolute dogmatic rigidity — Taliban-like some would say — the more they like it.

Would Whitman propose this during the campaign asked her challenger. That question wasn’t answered. “She wouldn’t say anything. … She wouldn’t say yes. … She would not say, ‘OK, I will do that.’ ” (My own efforts to get confirmation from Whitman’s campaign team, in preparation for this item, failed. Calls were not returned).